ASPECTS  OF  LITERATURE 


ASPECTS  OF 

LITERATURE 

J.   MIDDLETON   MURRY 


NEW  YORK: 
ALFRED  A.    KNOPF 

MCMXX 


Copyright,  1920 


Printed  in  Great  Britain 


PV5 


TO 

Bruce  Richmond 
to  whose  generous  encouragement 
i  owe  so  much 


43871 


O 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/aspectsofliteratOOmurrrich 


Preface 

Two  of  these  essays,  *  The  Function  of  Criticism  ' 
and  *  The  Religion  of  Rousseau,*  were  contributed  to 
the  Times  Literary  Supplement^  that  on  *  The  Poetry 
of  Edward  Thomas  '  in  the  Nation  \  all  the  rest  save 
one  have  appeared  in  the  Athenaum. 

The  essays  are  arranged  in  the  order  in  which 
they  were  written,  with  two  exceptions.  The  second 
part  of  the  essay  on  Tchehov  has  been  placed  with 
the  first  for  convenience,  although  in  order  of  thought 
it  should  follow  the  essay,  *  The  Cry  in  the  Wilderness/ 
More  important,  I  have  placed  *  The  Function  of 
Criticism  '  first  although  it  was  written  last,  because 
it  treats  of  the  broad  problem  of  literary  criticism, 
suggests  a  standard  of  values  implicit  elsewhere  in 
the  book,  and  thus  to  some  degree  affords  an  intro- 
duction to  the  remaining  essays. 

But  the  degree  is  not  great,  as  the  critical  reader 
will  quickly  discover  for  himself.  I  ask  him  not  to 
indulge  the  temptation  of  convicting  me  out  of  my 
own  mouth.  I  am  aware  that  my  practice  is  often 
inconsistent  with  my  professions;  and  I  ask  the 
reader  to  remember  that  the  professions  were  made 
after  the  practice  and  to  a  considerable  extent  as  the 
result  of  it.  The  practice  came  first,  and  if  I  could 
reasonably  expect  so  much  of  the  reader  I  would  ask 
him  to  read  *  The  Function  of  Criticism  *  once  more 
when  he  has  reached  the  end  of  the  book. 

I  make  no  apology  for  not  having  rewritten  the 
essays.    As  a  critic  I  enjoy  nothing  more  than  to  trace 

vii 


Preface 

the  development  of  a  writer's  attitude  through  its 
various  phases;  I  could  do  no  less  than  afford  my 
readers  the  opportunity  of  a  similar  enjoyment  in  my 
own  case.  They  may  be  assured  that  none  of  the 
essays  have  suffered  any  substantial  alteration,  even 
where,  for  instance  in  the  case  of  the  incidental  and 
(I  am  now  persuaded)  quite  inadequate  estimate  of 
Chaucer  in  *  The  Nostalgia  of  Mr  Masefield,*  my 
view  has  since  completely  changed.  Here  and  there 
I  have  recast  expressions  which,  though  not  suffi- 
ciently conveying  my  meaning,  had  been  passed  in 
the  haste  of  journalistic  production.  But  I  have 
nowhere  tried  to  adjust  earlier  to  later  points  of  view. 
I  am  aware  that  these  points  of  view  are  often 
difficult  to  reconcile;  that,  for  instance,  *  aesthetic  *  in 
the  essay  on  Tchehov  has  a  much  narrower  meaning 
than  it  bears  in  *The  Function  of  Criticism*;  that 
the  essay  on  *  The  Religion  of  Rousseau  *  is  criticism 
of  a  kind  which  I  deprecate  as  insufficient  in  the 
essay,  *  The  Cry  in  the  Wilderness,'  because  it  lacks 
that  reference  to  life  as  a  whole  which  I  have  come  to 
regard  as  essential  to  criticism;  and  that  in  this  latter 
essay  I  use  the  word  *  moral  *  (for  instance  in  the 
phrase  *  The  values  of  literature  are  in  the  last  resort 
moral  *)  in  a  sense  which  is  never  exactly  defined. 
The  key  to  most  of  these  discrepancies  will,  I  hope, 
be  found  in  the  introductory  essay  on  *  The  Function 
of  Criticism.' 

May,  1920. 


vni 


Contents 

PAGE 

THE    FUNCTION    OF    CRITICISM  I 

THE    RELIGION    OF    ROUSSEAU  1 5 

THE    POETRY    OF    EDWARD    THOMAS  29 

MR    YEATS*S    SWAN    SONG  39 

THE    WISDOM    OF    ANATOLE    FRANCE  46 

GERARD    MANLEY    HOPKINS  52 

THE    PROBLEM    OF    KEATS  62 

THOUGHTS    ON    TCHEHOV  7^ 

AMERICAN    POETRY  9 1 

RONSARD  99 

SAMUEL    BUTLER  I07 

THE    POETRY    OF    THOMAS    HARDY  121 
THE    PRESENT    CONDITION    OF    ENGLISH    POETRY           1 39 

THE    NOSTALGIA    OF    MR    MASEFIELD  1 50 

THE    LOST    LEGIONS  1 57 

THE    CRY    IN    THE    WILDERNESS  167 

POETRY    AND    CRITICISM  1 76 

COLERIDGE*S    CRITICISM  I  84 

SHAKESPEARE    CRITICISM  I  94 

ix 


">     •        • 


The  Function  of  Criticism 

It  is  curious  and  interesting  to  find  our  younger  men 
of  letters  actively  concerned  with  the  present  con- 
dition of  literary  criticism.  This  is  a  novel  preoccupa- 
tion for  them  and  one  which  is,  we  believe,  symptomatic 
of  a  general  hesitancy  and  expectation.  In  the  world 
of  letters  everything  is  a  little  up  in  the  air,  volatile 
and  uncrystallised.  It  is  a  world  of  rejections  and 
velleities ;  in  spite  of  outward  similarities,  a  strangely 
different  world  from  that  of  ^half  aj  dozen  years  ago. 
Then  one  had  a  tolerable  certainty  that  the  new  star, 
if  the  new  star  was  to  appear,  would  burst  upon  our 
vision  in  the  shape  of  a  novel.  To-day  we  feel  it 
might  be  anything.  The  cloud  no  bigger  than  a  man's 
hand  might  even  be,  like  Trigorin*s  in  *  The  Sea-gull,* 
like  a  piano  ;  it  has  no  predetermined  form. 

This  sense  of  incalculability,  which  has  been^ 
aroused  by  the  prodigious  literary  efflorescence  of  late 
years,  reacts  upon  its  cause;  and  the  reaction  tends 
by  many  different  paths  to  express  itself  finally  in  the 
ventilation  of  problems  that  hinge  about  criticism. 
There  is  a  general  feeling  that  the  growth  of  the 
young  plant  has  been  too  luxuriant;  a  desire  to  have 
it  vigorously  pruned  by  a  capable  gardener,  in  order 
that  its  strength  may  be  gathered  together  to  produce 
a  more  perfect  fruit.  There  is  also  a  sense  that  if 
the  lusus  natur<e^  the  writer  of  genius,  were  to  appear, 
there  ought  to  be  a  person  or  an  organisation  capable 
of  recognising  him,  however  unexpected  his  scent 
or  the  shape  of  his  leaves.    Both  these  tasks  fall  upon 

I 


Aspects  of  ZAferature 

trrticism.  The  yoynger  generation  looks  round  a 
fittle  apprehensively  to  see  if  there  is  a  gardener  whom 
it  can  trust,  and  decides,  perhaps  a  little  prematurely, 
that  there  is  none. 

There  is  reviewing,  but  no  criticism,  says  one  icy 
voice  that  we  have  learned  to  respect.  There  are 
pontiffs  and  potential  pontiffs,  but  no  critics,  says 
another  disrespectful  young  man.  Oh,  for  some  more 
Scotch  Reviewers  to  settle  the  hash  of  our  English 
bards,  sighs  a  third.  And  the  London  Mercury^  after 
whetting  our  appetite  by  announcing  that  it  proposed 
to  restore  the  standards  of  authoritative  criticism, 
still  leaves  us  a  little  in  the  dark  as  to  what  these 
standards  are.  Mr  T.  S.  Eliot  deals  more  kindly, 
if  more  frigidly,  with  us  in  the  Monthly  Chaphook, 
There  are,  he  says,  three  kinds  of  criticism — the 
historical,  the  philosophic,  and  the  purely  literary. 

'Every  form  of  genuine  criticism  is  directed 
towards  creation.  The  historical  or  philosophic  critic 
of  poetry  is  criticising  poetry  in  order  to  create  a 
history  or  a  philosophy;  the  poetic  critic  is  criticising 
poetry  in  order  to  create  poetry.' 

These  separate  and  distinct  kinds,  he  considers,  are 
but  rarely  found  to-day,  even  in  a  fragmentary  form; 
where  they  do  exist,  they  are  almost  invariably  mingled 
in  an  inextricable  confusion. 

Whether  we  agree  or  not  with  the  general  con- 
demnation of  reviewing  implicit  in  this  survey  of  the 
situation,  or  with  the  division  of  criticism  itself,  we 
have  every  reason  to  be  grateful  to  Mr  Eliot  for 
disentangling  the  problem  for  us.  The  question  of 
2 


The  Fu7tction  of  Criticism 

criticism  has  become  rather  like  Glaucus  the  sea-god, 
encrusted  with  shells  and  hung  with  weed  till  his 
lineaments  are  hardly  discernible.  We  have  at  least 
a  clear  sight  of  him  now,  and  we  are  able  to  decide 
whether  we  will  accept  Mr  Eliot's  description  of  him. 
Let  us  see. 

We  have  no  difficulty  in  agreeing  that  historical 
criticism  of  literature  is  a  kind  apart.  The  historical 
critic  approaches  literature  as  the  manifestation  of  an 
evolutionary  process  in  which  all  the  phases  are  of 
equal  value.  Essentially,  he  has  no  concern  with  the 
greater  or  less  literary  excellence  of  the  objects  whose 
history  he  traces — their  existence  is  alone  sufficient 
for  him;  a  bad  book  is  as  important  as  a  good  one, 
and  much  more  important  than  a  good  one  if  it 
exercised,  as  bad  books  have  a  way  of  doing,  a  real 
influence  on  the  course  of  literature.  In  practice, 
it  is  true,  the  historical  critic  generally  fails  of  this 
ideal  of  unimpassioned  objectivity.  He  either  begins 
by  making  judgments  of  value  for  himself,  or  accepts 
those  judgments  which  have  been  endorsed  by 
tradition.  He  fastens  upon  a  number  of  outstanding 
figures  and  more  or  less  deliberately  represents  the 
process  as  from  culmination  to  culmination;  but  in 
spite  of  this  arbitrary  foreshortening  he  is  primarily 
concerned,  in  each  one  of  the  phases  which  he  dis- 
tinguishes, with  that  which  is  common  to  every 
member  of  the  group  of  writers  which  it  includes. 
The  individuality,  the  quintessence,  of  a  writer  lies 
completely  outside  his  view. 

We  may  accept  the  isolation  of  the  historical 
critic  then,  at  least  in  theory,  and  conceive  of  him  as  a 
fragment  of  a  social  historian,   as  the  author  of  a 

3 


Aspects  of  Literature 

chapter  in  the  history  of  the  human  spirit.  But  can 
we  isolate  the  philosophic  critic  in  the  same  way  ? 
And  what  exactly  it  a  philosophic  critic  ?  Is  he  a 
critic  with  a  philosophical  scheme  in  which  art  and 
literature  have  their  places,  a  critic  who  therefore 
approaches  literature  with  a  definite  conception  of  it. 
as  one  among  many  parallel  manifestations  of  the 
human  spirit,  and  with  a  system  of  values  derived 
from  his  metaphysical  scheme  ?  Hegel  and  Croce 
are  philosophical  critics  in  this  sense,  and  Aristotle 
is  not,  as  far  as  we  can  judge  from  the  Poetics,  wherein 
he  considers  the  literary  work  of  Greece  as  an  isolated 
phenomenon,  and  examines  it  in  and  for  itself.  But 
for  the  moment,  and  with  the  uneasy  sense  that  we 
have  not  thoroughly  laid  the  ghost  of  philosophic 
criticism,  we  will  assume  that  we  have  isolated  him, 
and  pass  to  the  consideration  of  the  pure  literary  critic, 
if  indeed  we  can  find  him. 

What  does  he  do  ?  How  shall  we  recognise  him  ? 
Mr  Eliot  puts  before  us  Coleridge  and  Aristotle  and 
Dryden  as  literary  critics  -par  excellence  arranged  in  an 
ascending  scale  of  purity.  The  concatenation  is 
curious,  for  these  were  men  possessed  of  very  different 
interests  and  faculties  of  mind;  and  it  would  occur 
to  few  to  place  Dryden,  as  a  critic,  at  their  head.  The 
living  centre  of  Aristotle's  criticism  is  a  conception  of 
art  as  a  means  to  a  good  life.  As  an  activity,  poetry 
*  is  more  philosophic  than  history,'  a  nearer  approach 
to  the  universal  truth  in  appearances;  and  as  a  more 
active  influence,  drama  refines  our  spiritual  being  by 
a  purgation  of  pity  and  terror.  Indeed,  it  would  not 
be  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  very  pith  and 
marrow  of  Aristotle's  literary  criticism  is  a  system  of 

4 


The  Function  of  Criticism 

moral  values  derived  from  his  contemplation  of  life. 
It  was  necessary  that  this  relation  should  exist,  because 
for  Aristotle  literature  was,  essentially,  an  imitation  of 
life,  though  we  must  remember  to  understand  imita- 
tion according  to  our  final  sense  of  the  theme 
which  is  the  golden,  persistent  thread  throughout 
the  Poetics.  The  imitation  of  life  in  literature  was  — 
for  Aristotle,  the  creative  revelation  of  the  ideal 
actively  at  work  in  human  life.  The  tragic  hero  failed 
because  his  composition  was  less  than  ideal;  but  he 
could  only  be  a  tragic  hero  if  the  ideal  was  implicit 
in  him  and  he  visibly  approximated  to  it.  It  is  this 
constant  reference  to  the  ideal  which  makes  of 
*  imitation  '  a  truly  creative  principle  and  the  one 
which,  properly  understood,  is  the  most  permanently 
valid  and  pregnant  of  all ;  it  is  also  one  which  has 
been  constantly  misunderstood.  Its  importance  is, 
nevertheless,  so  central  that  adequate  recognition  of 
it  might  conceivably  be  taken  as  the  distinguishing 
mark  of  all  fruitful  criticism. 

To  his  sympathetic  understanding  of  this  principle  — 
Coleridge  owed  a  great  debt.  It  is  true  that  his  efforts 
to  refine  upon  it  were  not  only  unsuccessful,  but  a 
trifle  ludicrous;  his  effort  to  graft  the  vague  trans- 
cendentalism of  Germany  on  to  the  rigour  and  clarity 
of  Aristotle  was,  from  the  outset,  unfortunately  con- 
ceived. But  the  root  of  the  matter  was  there,  and  in 
Coleridge's  fertile  mind  the  Aristotelian  theory  of 
imitation  flowered  into  a  magnificent  conception  of 
the  validity  and  process  of  the  poetic  imagination. 
And  partly  because  the  foundation  was  truly  Aristote- 
lian, partly  because  Coleridge  had  known  what  it 
was  to  be  a  great  poet,  the  reference  to  life  pervades 

5 


>^ 


Aspects  of  Literature 

the  whole  of  what  is  permanently  valuable  in  Coleridge's 
criticism.  In  him,  too,  there  is  a  strict  and  mutually 
fertilising  relation  between  the  moral  and  the  aesthetic 
values.  This  is  the  firm  ground  beneath  his  feet 
when  he — too  seldom — proceeds  to  the  free  exercise 
of  his  exquisite  aesthetic  discrimination. 

In  Dryden,  however,  there  was  no  such  organic 
interpenetration.  Dryden,  too,  had  a  fine  sensibility, 
though  less  exquisite,  by  far,  than  that  of  Coleridge; 
but  his  theoretical  system  was  not  merely  alien  to 
him — it  was  in  itself  false  and  mistaken.  Corruptio 
optimi  pessima.  He  took  over  from  France  the 
sterilised  and  lifeless  Aristotelianism  which  has  been 
the  plague  of  criticism  for  centuries;  he  used  it  no 
worse  than  his  French  exemplars,  but  he  used  it 
very  little  better  than  they.  It  was  in  his  hands,  as 
in  theirs,  a  dead  mechanical  framework  of  rules  about 
the  unities.  Dryden,  we  can  see  in  his  critical  writing, 
was  constantly  chafed  by  it.  He  behaves  like  a  fine 
horse  with  a  bearing  rein:  he  is  continually  tossing 
his  head  after  a  minute  or  two  of  *  good  manners  and 
action,*  and  saying,  *  Shakespeare  was  the  best  of 
them,  anyhow  *;  *  Chaucer  beats  Ovid  to  a  standstill.' 
It  is  a  gesture  with  which  all  decent  people  sympathise, 
and  when  it  is  made  in  language  so  supple  as  Dryden's 
prose  it  has  a  lasting  charm.  Dryden 's  heart  was  in 
the  right  place,  and  he  was  not  afraid  of  showing  it; 
but  that  does  not  make  him  a  critic,  much  less  a  critic 
to  be  set  as  a  superior  in  the  company  of  Aristotle  and 
Coleridge. 

Our  search  for  the  pure  literary  critic  is  likely  to 
be  arduous.  We  have  seen  that  there  is  a  sense  in 
which  Dryden  is  a  purer  literary  critic  than  either 
6 


The  Function  of  Criticism 

Coleridge  or  Aristotle ;  but  we  have  also  seen  that  it  is 
precisely  by  reason  of  the  *  pureness  *  in  him  that  he 
is  to  be  relegated  into  a  rank  inferior  to  theirs.  It 
looks  as  though  we  might  have  to  pronounce  that 
the  true  literary  critic  is  the  philosophic  critic.  Yet 
the  pronouncement  must  not  be  prematurely  made ;  for 
there  is  a  real  and  vital  difference  between  those  for 
whom  we  have  accepted  the  designation  of  philosophic 
critics,  Hegel  or  Croce,  and  Aristotle  or  Coleridge. 
Yet  three  of  these  (and  it  might  be  wise  to  include 
Coleridge  as  a  fourth)  were  professional  philosophers. 
It  is  evidently  not  the  philosophy  as  such  that  makes 
the  difference. 

The  difference  depends,  we  believe,  upon  the 
nature  of  the  philosophy.  The  secret  lies  in  Aristotle. 
The  true  literary  critic  must  have  a  humanistic 
philosophy.  His  inquiries  must  be  modulated,  subject 
to  an  intimate,  organic  governance,  by  an  ideal  of  the 
good  life.  He  is  not  the  mere  investigator  of  facts; 
existence  is  never  for  him  synonymous  with  value, 
and  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance  that  he  should 
never  be  deluded  into  believing  that  it  is.  He  will 
not  accept  from  Hegel  the  thesis  that  all  the  events 
of  human  history,  all  man's  spiritual  activities,  are 
equally  authentic  manifestations  of  Spirit;  he  will 
not  even  recognise  the  existence  of  Spirit.  He  may 
accept  from  Croce  the  thesis  that  art  is  the  expression 
of  intuitions,  but  he  will  not  be  extravagantly  grateful, 
because  his  duty  as  a  critic  is  to  distinguish  between 
intuitions  and  to  decide  that  one  is  more  significant 
than  another.  A  philosophy  of  art  that  lends  him 
no  aid  in  this  and  affords  no  indication  why  the 
expression  of  one  intuition  should  be  preferred  to  the 
A.L.  B  7 


Aspects  of  Literature 

expression  of  another  is  of  little  value  to  him.  He 
will  incline  to  say  that  Hegel  and  Croce  are  the 
scientists  of  art  rather  than  its  philosophers. 

Here,  then,  is  the  opposition :  between  the  philos- 
ophy that  borrows  its  values  from  science  and  the 
philosophy  which  shares  its  values  with  art.  We  may 
put  it  with  more  cogency  and  truth  :  the  opposition 
lies  between  a  philosophy  without  values  and  a 
philosophy  based  upon  them.  For  values  are  human, 
anthropocentric.  Shut  them  out  once  and  you  shut 
them  out  for  ever.  You  do  not  get  them  back,  as 
some  believe,  by  declaring  that  such  and  such  a 
thing  is  true.  Nothing  is  precious  because  it  is  true 
save  to  a  mind  which  has,  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
decided  that  it  is  good  to  know  the  truth.  And  the 
making  of  that  single  decision  is  a  most  momentous 
judgment  of  value.  If  the  scientist  appeals  to  it,  as 
indeed  he  invariably  does,  he  too  is  at  bottom,  though 
he  may  deny  it,  a  humanist.  He  would  do  better 
to  confess  it,  and  to  confess  that  he  too  is  in  search 
of  the  good  life.  Then  he  might  become  aware  that 
to  search  for  the  good  life  is  in  fact  impossible,  unless 
he  has  an  ideal  of  it  before  his  mind^s  eye.  "" 

An  ideal  of  the  good  life,  if  it  is  to  have  the 
internal  coherence  and  the  organic  force  of  a  true 
ideal,  must  inevitably  be  (esthetic.  There  is  no  other 
power  than  our  aesthetic  intuition  by  which  we  can 
imagine  or  conceive  it;  we  can  express  it  only  in 
aesthetic  terms.  We  say,  for  instance,  the  good  life 
is  that  in  which  man  has  achieved  a  harmony  of  the 
diverse  elements  in  his  soul.  For  the  good  life,  we 
know  instinctively,  is  one  of  our  human  absolutes. 
It  is  not  good  with  reference  to  any  end  outside  itself. 
8 


The  Function  of  Criticism 

A  man  does  not  live  the  good  life  because  he  is  a 
good"  citizen;  tut  he  is  a  good  citizen  because  he 
lives  the  good  life.  And  here  we  touch  the  secret 
of  the  most  magnificently  human  of  all  books  that 
has  ever  been  written — Plato *s  Republic,  In  the 
Republic  the  good  life  and  the  life  of  the  good  citizen 
are  identified;  but  the  citizenship  is  not  of  an  earthly 
but  of  an  ideal  city,  whose  proportions,  like  the  duties 
of  its  citizens,  are  determined  by  the  aesthetic  intuition. 
Plato^s  philosophy  is  aesthetic  through  and  through, 
and  because  it  is  aesthetic  it  is  the  most  human,  the 
most  permanently  pregnant  of  all  philosophies.  Much 
labour  has  been  spent  on  the  examination  of  the 
identity  whfch  Plato  established  between  the  good  and 
the  beautiful.  It  is  labour  lost,  for  that  identity  is 
axiomatic,  absolute,  irreducible.  The  Greeks  knew 
by  instinct  that  it  is  so,  and  in  their  common  speech 
the  word  for  a  gentleman  was  the  KoXh%  K^^yadd^,  the 
beautiful-good. 

This  is  why  we  have  to  go  back  to  the  Greeks  for 
the  principles  of  art  and  criticism,  and  why  only  those 
critics  who  have  returned  to  bathe  themselves  in  the 
life-giving  source  have  made  enduring  contributions 
to  criticism.  They  alone  are — let  us  not  say  philosophic 
critics  but — critics  indeed.  Their  approach  to  life 
and  their  approach  to  art  are  the  same;  to  them,  and 
to  them  alone,  life  and  art  are  one.  The  interpene- 
tration  is  complete;  the  standards  by  which  life  and 
art  are  judged  the  same.  If  we  may  use  a  metaphor, 
in  the  Greek  view  art  is  the  consciousness  of  life. 
Poetry  is  more  philosophic  and  more"  highly  serious 
than  history,  just  as  the  mind  of  a  man  is  more  signi- 
ficant than  his  outward  gestures.     To  make  those 


Aspects  of  Literature 

gestures  significant  the  art  of  the  actor  must  be 
called  into  play.  So  to  make  the  outward  event  of 
history  significant  the  poet's  art  is  needed.  Therefore 
a  criticism  which  is  based  on  the  Greek  view  is 
impelled  to  assign  to  art  a  place,  the  place  of  sovereignty 
in  its  scheme  of  values.  That  Plato  himself  did  not 
do  this  was  due  to  his  having  misunderstood  the 
nature  of  that  process  of  '  imitation  '  in  which  art 
consists;  but  only  the  superficial  readers  of  Plato 
— and  a  good  many  readers  deserve  no  better  name 
— will  conclude  from  the  fact  that  he  rejected  art 
that  his  attitude  was  not  fundamentally  aesthetic.  Not 
only  is  the  Republic  itself  one  of  the  greatest  *  imita- 
tions/ one  of  the  most  subtle  and  profound  works  of 
art  ever  created,  but  it  would  also  be  true  to  say  that 
Plato  cleared  the  way  for  a  true  conception  of  art. 
In  reality  he  rejected  not  art,  but  false  art;  and  it 
only  remained  for  Aristotle  to  discern  the  nature  of 
the  relation  between  artistic  *  imitation  '  and  the  ideal 
for  the  Platonic  system  to  be  complete  and  four-square, 
a  perpetual  inspiration  and  an  everlasting  foundation 
for  art  and  the  criticism  of  art. 

Art,  then,  is  the  revelation  of  the  ideal  in  human 
life.  As  the  ideal  is  active  and  organic  so  must  art 
itself  be.  The  ideal  is  never  achieved,  therefore  the 
process  of  revealing  it  is  creative  in  the  truest  sense 
of  the  word.  More  than  that,  only  by  virtue  of  the 
artist  in  him  can  man  appreciate  or  imagine  the  ideal 
at  all.  To  discern  it  is  essentially  the  work  of  divina- 
tion or  intuition.  The  artist  divines  the  end  at  which 
human  life  is  aiming;  he  makes  men  who  are  his 
characters  completely  expressive  of  themselves,  which 
no  actual  man  ever  has  been.  If  he  works  on  a 
lo 


The  Function  of  Criticism 

smaller  canvas  he  aims  to  make  himself  completely 
expressive  of  himself.  That,  also,  is  the  aim  of  the 
greater  artist  who  expresses  himself  through  the 
medium  of  a  world  of  characters  of  his  own  creation. 
He  needs  that  machinery,  if  a  coarse  and  non-organic 
metaphor  may  be  tolerated,  for  the  explication  of  his 
own  intuitions  of  the  ideal,  which  are  so  various  that 
the  attempt  to  express  them  through  the  persona  of 
himself  would  inevitably  end  in  confusion.  That  is 
why  the  great  poetic  genius  is  never  purely  lyrical, 
and  why  the  greatest  lyrics  are  as  often  as  not  the 
work  of  poets  who  are  only  seldom  lyrical. 

Moreover,  every  act  of  intuition  or  divination 
of  the  ideal  in  act  in  the  world  of  men  must  be  set, 
implicitly  or  explicitly,  in  relation  to  the  absolute  ideal. 
In  subordinating  its  particular  intuitions  to  the 
absolute  ideal  art  is,  therefore,  merely  asserting  its 
own  sovereign  autonomy.  True  criticism  is  itself  an 
organic  part  of  the  whole  activity  of  art;  it  is  the 
exercise  of  sovereignty  by  art  upon  itself,  and  not  the 
imposition  of  an  alien.  To  use  our  previous  metaphor,  * 
as  art  is  the  consciousness  of  life,  criticism  is  the 
consciousness  of  art.  The  essential  activity  of  true 
criticism  is  the  harmonious  control  of  art  by  art. 
This  is  at  the  root  of  a  confusion  in  the  thought  of 
Mr  Eliot,  who,  in  his  just  anxiety  to  assert  the  full 
autonomy  of  art,  pronounces  that  the  true  critic  of 
poetry  is  the  poet  and  has  to  smuggle  the  anomalous 
Aristotle  in  on  the  hardly  convincing  ground  that 
*he  wrote  well  about  everything,'  and  has,  moreover, 
to  elevate  Dryden  to  a  purple  which  he  is  quite 
unfitted  to  wear.  No,  what  distinguishes  the  true 
critic  of  poetry  is  a  truly  aesthetic  philosophy.    In  the 

II 


Aspects  of  Literature 

present  state  of  society  it  is  extremely  probable  that 
only  the  poet  or  the  artist  will  possess  this,  for  art  and 
poetry  were  never  more  profoundly  divorced  from 
the  ordinary  life  of  society  than  they  are  at  the  present 
day.  But  the  poet  who  would  be  a  critic  has  to  make 
his  aesthetic  philosophy  conscious  to  himself;  to 
him  as  a  poet  it  may  be  unconscious.  This  necessary 
change  from  unconsciousness  to  consciousness  is  by 
no  means  easy,  and  we  should  do  well  to  insist  upon 
its  difficulty,  for  quite  as  much  nonsense  is  talked  about 
poetry  by  poets  and  by  artists  about  art  as  by  the 
profane  about  either.  Moreover,  it  is  important  to 
remember  that  in  proportion  as  society  approaches  the 
ideal — there  is  no  continual  progress  towards  the 
ideal;  at  present  society  is  as  far  removed  from  it  as 
it  has  ever  been — the  chance  of  the  philosopher,  of 
the  scientist  even,  becoming  a  true  critic  of  art  grows 
greater.  When  the  aesthetic  basis  of  all  humane 
activity  is  familiarly  recognised,  the  values  of  the 
philosopher,  the  scientist,  and  the  artist  become 
consciously  the  same,  and  therefore  interchangeable. 

Still,  the  ideal  society  is  sufficiently  remote  for  us 
to  disregard  it,  and  we  shall  say  that  the  principle 
of  art  for  art's  sake  contains  an  element  of  truth 
when  it  is  opposed  to  those  who  would  inflict  upon 
art  the  values  of  science,  of  metaphysics,  or  of  a 
morality  of  mere  convention.  We  shall  also  say  that 
the  principle  of  art  for  art's  sake  needs  to  be  under- 
stood and  interpreted  very  differently.  Its  implications 
are  tremendous.  Art  is  autonomous,  and  to  be 
pursued  for  its  own  sake,  precisely  because  it  com- 
prehends the  whole  of  human  life;  because  it  has 
reference  to  a  more  perfectly  human  morality  than 

12 


The  Function  of  Criticism 

any  other  activity  of  man;  because,  in  so  far  as  it 
is  truly  art,  it  is  indicative  of  a  more  comprehensive 
and  unchallengeable  harmony  in  the  spirit  of  man. 
It  does  not  demand  impossibilities,  that  man  should 
be  at  one  with  the  universe  or  in  tune  with  the  infinite; 
but  it  does  envisage  the  highest  of  all  attainable  ideals, 
that  man  should  be  at  one  with  himself,  obedient  to 
his  own  most  musical  law. 

Thus  art  reveals  to  us  the  principle  of  its  own 
governance.  The  function  of  criticism  is  to  apply  it. 
Obviously  it  can  be  applied  only  by  him  who  has 
achieved,  if  not  the  actual  aesthetic  ideal  in  life,  at 
least  a  vision  and  a  sense  of  it.  He  alone  will  know 
that  the  principle  he  has  to  elucidate  and  apply  is 
living,  organic.  It  is  indeed  the  very  principle  of 
artistic  creation  itself.  Therefore  he  will  approach 
what  claims  to  be  a  work  of  art  first  as  a  thing  in 
itself,  and  seek  with  it  the  most  intimate  and  immediate 
contact  in  order  that  he  may  decide  whether  it  too  is 
organic  and  living.  He  will  be  untiring  in  his  effort 
to  refine  his  power  of  discrimination  by  the  frequenta- 
tion  of  the  finest  work  of  the  past,  so  that  he  may  be 
sure  of  himself  when  he  decides,  as  he  must,  whether 
the  object  before  him  is  the  expression  of  an  aesthetic 
intuition  at  all.  At  the  best  he  is  likely  to  find  that 
it  is  mixed  and  various;  that  fragments  of  aesthetic 
vision  jostle  with  unsubordinated  intellectual  judg- 
ments. 

But,  in  regarding  the  work  of  art  as  a  thing  in 
itself,  he  will  never  forget  the  hierarchy  of  compre- 
hension, that  the  active  ideal  of  art  is  indeed  to  see 
life  steadily  and  see  it  whole,  and  that  only  he  has 
a  claim  to  the  title  of  a  great  artist  whose  work 

13 


Aspects  of  Literature 

manifests  an  incessant  growth  from  a  merely  personal 
immediacy  to  a  coherent  and  all-comprehending 
attitude  to  life.  The  great  artist's  work  is  in  all  its 
parts  a  revelation  of  the  ideal  as  a  principle  of  activity 
in  human  life.  As  the  apprehension  of  the  ideal  is 
more  or  less  perfect,  the  artist's  comprehension  will 
be  greater  or  less.  The  critic  has  not  merely  the 
right,  but  the  duty,  to  judge  between  Homer  and 
Shakespeare,  between  Dante  and  Milton,  between 
Cezanne  and  Michelangelo,  Beethoven  and  Mozart. 
If  the  foundations  of  his  criticism  are  truly  aesthetic,  he 
is  compelled  to  believe  and  to  show  that  among 
would-be  artists  some  are  triie  artists  and  some  are 
not,  and  that  among  true  artists  some  are  greater 
than  others.  That  what  has  generally  passed  under 
the  name  of  aesthetic  criticism  assumes  as  an  axiom 
that  every  true  work  of  art  is  unique  and  incomparable 
is  merely  the  paradox  which  betrays  the  unworthiness 
of  such  criticism  to  bear  the  name  it  has  arrogated 
to  itself.  The  function  of  true  criticism  is  to  establish 
a  definite  hierarchy  among  the  great  artists  of  the 
past,  as  well  as  to  test  the  production  of  the  present; 
by  the  combination  of  these  activities  it  asserts  the 
organic  unity  of  all  art.  It  cannot  honestly  be  said 
that  our  present  criticism  is  adequate  to  either 
task.  [april,  1920. 


14 


The  Religion  of  Rousseau 

These  are  times  when  men  have  need  of  the  great 
solitaries;  for  each  man  now  in  his  moment  is  a  prey 
to  the  conviction  that  the  world  and  his  deepest 
aspirations  are  incommensurable.  He  is  shaken  by  a 
presentiment  that  the  lovely  bodies  of  men  are  being 
spent  and  flaming  human  minds  put  out  in  a  conflict 
for  something  which  never  can  be  won  in  the  clash 
of  material  arms,  and  he  is  distraught  by  a  vision  of 
humanity  as  a  child  pitifully  wandering  in  a  dark 
wood  where  the  wind  faintly  echoes  the  strange  word 
*  Peace.*  Therefore  he  too  wanders  pitifully  like 
that  child,  seeking  peace,  and  men  are  become  the 
symbols  of  mankind.  The  tragic  paradox  of  human 
life  which  slumbers  in  the  soul  in  years  of  peace  is 
awakened  again.  When  we  would  be  solitary  and 
cannot,  we  are  made  sensible  of  the  depth  and  validity 
of  the  impulse  which  moved  the  solitaries  of  the 
past. 

The  paradox  is  apparent  now  on  every  hand.  It 
appears  in  the  death  of  the  author  of  ha  Formation 
Religieuse  de  J.-J*  Rousseau}  One  of  the  most  dis- 
tinguished of  the  younger  generation  of  French 
scholar-critics,  M.  Masson  met  a  soldier's  death 
before  the  book  to  which  he  had  devoted  ten  years  of 
his  life  was  published.  He  had  prepared  it  for  the 
press  in  the  leisure  hours  of  the  trenches.  There  he 
had  communed  with  the  unquiet  spirit  of  the  man 

*  La  Formation  RSligieuse  de  Jean-Jacques  Rousseau.     Par  Pierre- 
Maurice  Masson.     (Paris :    Hachette.     Three  volumes.) 

15 


Aspects  of  Litter atuf^e 

who  once  thrilled  the  heart  of  Europe  by  stammering 
forgotten  secrets,  and  whispered  to  an  age  flushed 
and  confident  with  material  triumphs  that  the  battle 
had  been  won  in  vain.  Rousseau,  rightly  understood, 
is  no  consoling  companion  for  a  soldier.  What  if, 
after  all,  the  true  end  of  man  be  those  hours  of  plenary 
beatitude  he  spent  lying  at  the  bottom  of  the  boat  on 
the  Lake  of  Bienne  ?  What  if  the  old  truth  is  valid 
still,  that  man  is  born  free  but  is  everywhere  in  chains  ? 
Let  us  hope  that  the  dead  author  was  not  too  keenly 
conscious  of  the  paradox  which  claimed  him  for 
sacrifice.    His  death  would  have  been  bitter. 

From  his  book  we  can  hardly  hazard  a  judgment. 
His  method  would  speak  against  it.  Jean-Jacques, 
as  he  himself  knew  only  too  well,  is  one  of  the  last 
great  men  to  be  catechised  historically,  for  he  was 
inadequate  to  the  life  which  is  composed  of  the  facts 
of  which  histories  are  made.  He  had  no  historical 
sense;  and  of  a  man  who  has  no  historical  sense  no 
real  history  can  be  written.  Chronology  was  meaning- 
less to  him  because  he  could  recognise  no  sovereignty 
of  time  over  himself.  With  him  ends  were  beginnings. 
In  the  third  Dialogue  he  tell  us — and  it  is  nothing  less 
than  the  sober  truth  told  by  a  man  who  knew  himself 
well — that  his  works  must  be  read  backwards, 
beginning  with  the  last,  by  those  who  would  under- 
stand him.  Indeed,  his  function  was,  in  a  deeper 
sense  than  is  imagined  by  those  who  take  the  parable 
called  the  Contrat  Social  ^ov  a  solemn  treatise  of  political 
philosophy,  to  give  the  lie  to  history.  In  himself  he 
pitted  the  eternal  against  the  temporal  and  grew 
younger  with  years.  He  might  be  known  as  the  man 
of  the  second  childhood  par  excellence.  To  the  eye 
i6 


The  Religion  of  Rousseau 

of  history  the  effort  of  his  soul  was  an  effort  backwards, 
because  the  vision  of  history  is  focused  only  for  a 
perspective  of  progress.  On  his  after-dinner  journey 
to  Diderot  at  Vincennes,  Jean-Jacques  saw,  with  the 
suddenness  of  intuition,  that  that  progress,  amongst 
whose  convinced  and  cogent  prophets  he  had  lived 
so  long,  was  for  him  an  unsubstantial  word.  He 
beheld  the  soul  of  man  suh  specie  aternitatis.  In  his 
vision  history  and  institutions  dissolved  away.  His 
second  childhood  had  begun. 

On  such  a  man  the  historical  method  can  have 
no  grip.  There  is,  as  the  French  say,  no  engrenage. 
It  points  to  a  certain  lack  of  the  subtler  kind  of  under- 
standing to  attempt  to  apply  the  method;  more  truly, 
perhaps,  to  an  unessential  interest,  which  has  of  late 
years  been  imported  into  French  criticism  from 
Germany.  The  Sorbonne  has  not,  we  know,  gone 
unscathed  by  the  disease  of  documentation  for  docu- 
mentation's sake.  M.  Masson's  three  volumes  leave 
us  with  the  sense  that  their  author  had  learnt  a  method 
and  in  his  zeal  to  apply  it  had  lost  sight  of  the 
momentous  question  whether  Jean-Jacques  was  a 
person  to  whom  it  might  be  applied  with  a  prospect 
of  discovery.  No  one  who  read  Rousseau  with  a 
mind  free  of  ulterior  motives  could  have  any  doubt 
on  the  matter.  Jean-Jacques  is  categorical  on  the 
point.  The  Savoyard  Vicar  was  speaking  for  Jean- 
Jacques  to  posterity  when  he  began  his  profession 
of  faith  with  the  words  : — 

*  Je  ne  veux  argumenter  avec  vous,  ni  meme  de 
tenter  vous  convaincre;  il  me  suffit  de  vous  exposer 
ce  que  je   pense  dans  la  simplicite  de  mon   cceur. 

17 


Aspects  of  Literature 

Consultez  le  votre  pendant  mon  discours;  c'est  tout 
ce  que  je  vous  demanded 

To  the  extent,  therefore,  that  M.  Masson  did  not 
respond  to  this  appeal  and  filled  his  volumes  with 
information  concerning  the  books  Jean-Jacques  might 
have  read  and  a  hundred  other  interesting  but  only 
partly  relevant  things,  he  did  the  citizen  of  Geneva 
a  wrong.  The  ulterior  motive  is  there,  and  the  faint 
taste  of  a  thesis  in  the  most  modern  manner.  But  the 
method  is  saved  by  the  perception  which,  though  it 
sometimes  lacks  the  perfect  keenness  of  complete 
understanding,  is  exquisite  enough  to  suggest  the 
answer  to  the  questions  it  does  not  satisfy.  Though 
the  environment  is  lavish  the  man  is  not  lost. 

It  is  but  common  piety  to  seek  to  understand 
Jean-Jacques  in  the  way  in  which  he  pleaded  so  hard 
to  be  understood.  Yet  it  is  now  over  forty  years 
since  a  voice  of  authority  told  England  how  it  was 
to  regard  him.  Lord  Morley  was  magisterial  and 
severe,  and  England  obeyed.  One  feels  almost  that 
Jean-Jacques  himself  would  have  obeyed  if  he  had 
been  alive.  He  would  have  trembled  at  the  stern 
sentence  that  his  deism  was  *  a  rag  of  metaphysics 
floating  in  a  sunshine  of  sentimentalism,'  and  he 
would  have  whispered  that  he  would  try  to  be  good; 
but,  when  he  heard  his  Dialogues  described  as  the 
outpourings  of  a  man  with  persecution  mania,  he 
might  have  rebelled  and  muttered  silently  an  Eppur 
si  muove.  We  see  now  that  it  was  a  mistake  to  stand 
him  in  the  social  dock,  and  that  precisely  those 
Dialogues  which  the  then  Mr  Morley  so  powerfully 
dismissed  contain  his  plea  that  the  tribunal  has  no 
i8 


The  Religion  of  Rousseau 

jurisdiction.  To  his  contention  that  he  wrote  his 
books  to  ease  his  own  soul  it  might  be  replied  that 
their  publication  was  a  social  act  which  had  vast 
social  consequences.  But  Jean-Jacques  might  well 
retort  that  the  fact  that  his  contemporaries  and  the 
generation  which  followed  read  and  judged  him  in  the 
letter  and  not  in  the  spirit  is  no  reason  why  we,  at 
nearly  two  centuries  remove,  should  do  the  same. 

A  great  man  may  justly  claim  our  deference. 
If  Jean-Jacques  asks  that  his  last  work  shall  be  read 
first,  we  are  bound,  even  if  we  consider  it  only  a 
quixotic  humour,  to  indulge  it.  But  to  those  who 
read  the  neglected  Dialogues  it  will  appear  a  humour 
no  longer.  Here  is  a  man  who  at  the  end  of  his  days 
is  filled  to  overflowing  with  bitterness  at  the  thought 
that  he  has  been  misread  and  misunderstood.  He 
says  to  himself  :  Either  he  is  at  bottom  of  the  same 
nature  as  other  men  or  he  is  different.  If  he  is  of 
the  same  nature,  then  there  must  be  a  malignant  plot 
at  work.  He  has  revealed  his  heart  with  labour  and 
good  faith;  not  to  hear  him  his  fellow-men  must 
have  stopped  their  ears.  If  he  is  of  another  kind 
than  his  fellows,  then — but  he  cannot  bear  the 
thought.  Indeed  it  is  a  thought  that  no  man  can 
bear.  They  are  blind  because  they  will  not  see.  He 
has  not  asked  them  to  believe  that  what  he  says  is 
true;  he  asks  only  that  they  shall  believe  that  he  is 
sincere,  sincere  in  what  he  says,  sincere,  above  all, 
when  he  implores  that  they  should  listen  to  the 
undertone.  He  has  been  *  the  painter  of  nature  and 
the  historian  of  the  human  heart.* 

His  critics  might  have  paused  to  consider  why 
Jean- Jacques,  certainly  not  niggard  of  self-praise  in 

19 


Aspects  of  Literature 

the  Dialogues^  should  have  claimed  no  more  for  himself 
than  this.  He  might  have  claimed,  with  what  in 
their  eyes  at  least  must  be  good  right,  to  have  been 
pre-eminent  in  his  century  as  a  political  philosopher,  a 
novelist,  and  a  theorist  of  education.  Yet  to  himself 
he  is  no  more  than  *  the  painter  of  nature  and  the 
historian  of  the  human  heart.'  Those  who  would 
make  him  more  make  him  less,  because  they  make 
him  other  than  he  declares  himself  to  be.  His  whole 
life  has  been  an  attempt  to  be  himself  and  nothing 
else  besides;  and  all  his  works  have  been  nothing 
more  and  nothing  less  than  his  attempt  to  make  his 
own  nature  plain  to  men.  Now  at  the  end  of  his 
life  he  has  to  swallow  the  bitterness  of  failure.  He 
has  been  acclaimed  the  genius  of  his  age ;  kings  have 
delighted  to  honour  him,  but  they  have  honoured 
another  man.  They  have  not  known  the  true  Jean- 
Jacques.  They  have  taken  his  parables  for  literal 
truth,  and  he  knows  why. 

*  Des  etres  si  singulierement  constitues  doivent 
necessairement  s*exprimer  autrement  que  les  hommes 
ordinaires.  II  est  impossible  qu'avec  des  ames  si 
diff^remment  modifies  ils  ne  portent  pas  dans 
Texpression  de  leurs  sentiments  et  de  leurs  idees 
Tempreinte  de  ces  modifications.  Si  cette  empreinte 
echappe  a  ceux  qui  n*ont  aucune  notion  de  cette 
mani^re  d'etre,  elle  ne  peut  echapper  a  ceux  qui  la 
connoissent,  et  qui  en  sont  affectes  eux-memes. 
C'est  une  signe  caracteristique  auquel  les  inities  se 
reconnoissent  entre  eux;  et  ce  qui  donne  un  grand 
prix  a  ce  signe,  c'est  qu'il  ne  peut  se  contrefaire,  que 
jamais  il  n'agit  qu'au  niveau  de  sa  source,  et  que, 
20 


The  Religion  of  Rousseau 

quand  il  ne  part  pas  du  coeur  de  ceux  qui  rimitent, 
il  n*arrive  pas  non  plus  aux  coeurs  faits  pour  le 
distinguer;  mais  sitot  qu'il  y  parvient,  on  ne  sauroit 
s'y  meprendre;   il  est  vrai  des  qu'il  est  senti.' 

At  the  end  of  his  days  he  felt  that  the  great  labour  of 
his  life,  which  had  been  to  express  an  intuitive  certainty 
in  words  which  would  carry  intellectual  conviction, 
had  been  in  vain,  and  his  last  words  are  :  *  It  is  true 
so  soon  as  it  is  felt/ 

Three  pages  would  tell  as  much  of  the  essential 
truth  of  his  *  religious  formation  '  as  three  volumes. 
At  Les  Charmettes  with  Mme  de  Warens,  as  a  boy 
and  as  a  young  man,  he  had  known  peace  of  soul.  In 
Paris,  amid  the  intellectual  exaltation  and  enthusiasms 
of  the  Encyclopaedists,  the  memory  of  his  lost  peace 
haunted  him  like  an  uneasy  conscience.  His  boyish 
unquestioning  faith  disappeared  beneath  the  destruc- 
tive criticism  of  the  great  pioneers  of  enlightenment 
and  progress.  Yet  when  all  had  been  destroyed  the 
hunger  in  his  heart  was  still  unsatisfied.  Underneath 
his  passionate  admiration  for  Diderot  smouldered  a 
spark  of  resentment  that  he  was  not  understood.  They 
had  torn  down  the  fabric  of  expression  into  which 
he  had  poured  the  emotion  of  his  immediate  certainty 
as  a  boy;  sometimes  with  an  uplifted,  sometimes  with 
a  sinking  heart  he  surveyed  the  ruins.  But  the 
certainty  that  he  had  once  been  certain,  the  memory 
and  the  desire  of  the  past  peace — this  they  could  not 
destroy.  They  could  hardly  even  weaken  this  element 
within  him,  for  they  did  not  know  that  it  existed. 
They  were  unable  to  conceive  that  it  could  exist. 
Jean-Jacques  himself  could  give  them  no  clue  to  its 

21 


Aspects  of  Literature 

existence;  he  had  no  words,  and  he  was  still  under 
the  spell  of  the  intellectual  dogma  of  his  age  that 
words  must  express  definite  things.  In  common  with 
his  age  he  had  lost  the  secret  of  the  infinite  persuasion 
of  poetry.  So  the  consciousness  that  he  was  different 
from  those  who  surrounded  him,  and  from  those  he 
admired  as  his  masters,  took  hold  of  him.  He  was 
afraid  of  his  own  otherness,  as  all  men  are  afraid  when 
the  first  knowledge  of  their  own  essential  loneliness 
begins  to  trouble  their  depths.  The  pathos  of  his 
struggle  to  kill  the  seed  of  this  devastating  knowledge 
is  apparent  in  his  declared  desire  to  become  '  a  polished 
gentleman.'  In  the  note  which  he  added  to  his  memoir 
for  M.  Dupin  in  1749  he  confesses  to  this  ideal. 
If  only  he  could  become  *  one  of  them,*  indistinguish- 
able without  and  within,  he  might  be  delivered  from 
that  disquieting  sense  of  tongue-tied  queerness  in  a/ 
normal  world.  v^ 

If  he  cheated  himself  at  all,  the  deception  was 
brief.  The  poignant  memory  of  Les  Charmettes 
whispered  to  him  that  there  was  a  state  of  grace  in 
which  the  hard  things  were  made  clear.  But  he  had 
not  yet  the  courage  of  his  destiny.  His  consciousness  of 
his  separation  from  his  fellows  had  still  to  harden  into 
a  consciousness  of  superiority  before  that  courage 
would  come.  On  the  road  to  Vincennes  on  an  October 
evening  in  1749 — M.  Masson  has  fixed  the  date  for 
us — ^he  read  in  a  news-sheet  the  question  of  the 
Dijon  Academy  :  '  Si  le  retablissement  des  arts  et 
des  sciences  a  contribue  a  epurer  les  moeurs  ?  '  The 
scales  dropped  from  his  eyes  and  the  weight  was 
removed  from  his  tongue.  There  is  no  mystery  about 
this  *  revelation.'  For  the  first  time  the  question  had 
22 


The  Religio7t  of  Rousseau 

been  put  in  terms  which  struck  him  squarely  in  the 
heart.  Jean-Jacques  made  his  reply  with  the  stammer- 
ing honesty  of  a  man  of  genius  wandering  in  age  of 
talent. 

The  First  Discourse  seems  to  many  rhetorical 
and  extravagant.  In  after  days  it  appeared  so  to 
Rousseau  himself,  and  he  claimed  no  more  for  it 
than  that  he  had  tried  to  tell  the  truth.  Before  he 
learned  that  he  had  won  the  Dijon  prize  and  that  his 
work  had  taken  Paris  by  storm,  he  was  surely  a  prey 
to  terrors  lest  his  Vincennes  vision  of  the  non- 
existence of  progress  should  have  been  mere  madness. 
The  success  reassured  him.  *  Cette  faveur  du  public, 
nullcment  brigue,  et  pour  un  auteur  inconnu,  me 
donna  la  premiere  assurance  veritable  de  mon  talent.* 
He  was,  in  fact,  not  *  queer,*  but  right;  and  he  had 
seemed  to  be  queer  precisely  because  he  was  right. 
Now  he  had  the  courage.  *  Je  suis  grossier,'  he  wrote 
in  the  preface  to  Narcisse^  *  maussade,  impoli  par 
principes;  je  me  fous  de  tous  vous  autres  gens  de 
cour;  je  suis  un  barbare.'  There  is  a  touch  of 
exaggeration  and  bravado  in  it  all.  He  was  still 
something  of  the  child  hallooing  in  the  dark  to  give 
himself  heart.  He  clutched  hold  of  material  symbols 
of  the  freedom  he  had  won,  round  wig,  black  stockings, 
and  a  living  gained  by  copying  music  at  so  much  a 
line.  But  he  did  not  break  with  his  friends;  the 
*  bear  *  suffered  himself  to  be  made  a  lion.  He  had 
still  a  foot  in  either  camp,  for  though  he  had  the 
conviction  that  he  was  right,  he  was  still  fumbling  for 
his  words.  The  memoirs  of  Madame  d'Epinay  tell 
us  how  in  1754,  at  dinner  at  Mile  Quinault*s,  impotent 
to   reply   to   the   polite   atheistical    persiflage   of  the 

A.L.  c  23 


Aspects  of  Literature 

company,  he  broke  out  :  *  Et  moi,  messieurs,  je 
crois  en  Dieu.  Je  sors  si  vous  dites  un  mot  de  plus.' 
That  was  not  what  he  meant;  neither  was  the  First 
Discourse  what  he  meant.  He  had  still  to  find  his 
language,  and  to  find  his  language  he  had  to  find  his 
peace.  He  was  like  a  twig  whirled  about  in  an  eddy 
of  a  stream.  Suddenly  the  stream  bore  him  to  Geneva, 
where  he  returned  to  the  church  which  he  had  left 
at  Confignon.  That,  too,  was  not  what  he  meant. 
When  he  returned  from  Geneva,  Madame  d'Epinay 
had  built  him  the  Ermitage. 

In  the  Reveries^  which  are  mellow  with  the  golden 
calm  of  his  discovered  peace,  he  tells  how,  having 
reached  the  climacteric  which  he  had  set  at  forty 
years,  he  went  apart  into  the  solitude  of  the  Ermitage 
to  inquire  into  the  configuration  of  his  own  soul,  and 
to  fix  once  for  all  his  opinions  and  his  principles. 
In  the  exquisite  third  Reverie  two  phrases  occur 
continually.  His  purpose  was  *  to  find  firm  ground  ' 
— *  prendre  une  assiette,' — and  his  means  to  this 
discovery  was  *  spiritual  honesty ' — *  bonne  foi.' 
Rousseau's  deep  concern  was  to  elucidate  the  anatomy 
of  his  own  soul,  but,  since  he  was  sincere,  he  regarded 
it  as  a  type  of  the  soul  of  man.  Looking  into  himself, 
he  saw  that,  in  spite  of  all  his  follies,  his  weaknesses, 
his  faintings  by  the  way,  his  blasphemies  against  the 
spirit,  he  was  good.  Therefore  he  declared  :  Man 
is  born  good.  Looking  into  himself  he  saw  that  he 
was  free  to  work  out  his  own  salvation,  and  to  find 
that  solid  foundation  of  peace  which  he  so  fervently 
desired.  Therefore  he  declared  :  Man  is  born  free. 
To  the  whisper  of  les  Charmettes  that  there  was  a 
condition  of  grace  had  been  added  the  sterner  voice 
24 


The  Religion  of  Rousseau 

of  remorse  for  his  abandoned  children,  telling  him 
that  he  had  fallen  from  his  high  estate. 

*J'ai  fui  en  vain;   partout  j*ai  retrouve  la  Loi. 
II  faut  ceder  enfin!   6  porte,  il  faut  admettre 
L'hote;   coeur  fremissant,  il  faut  subir  le  maitre, 
Quelqu'un  qui  soit  en  moi  plus  moi-meme  que 
moi.' 

The  noble  verse  of  M.  Claudel  contains  the  final 
secret  of  Jean-Jacques,  He  found  in  himself  some- 
thing more  him  than  himself.  Therefore  he  declared : 
There  is  a  God.  But  he  sought  to  work  out  a  logical 
foundation  for  these  pinnacles  of  truth.  He  must 
translate  these  luminous  convictions  of  his  soul  into 
arguments  and  conclusions.  He  could  not,  even  to 
himself,  admit  that  they  were  only  intuitions;  and 
in  the  Contrat  Social  he  turned  the  reason  to  the 
service  of  a  certainty  not  her  own. 

This  unremitting  endeavour  to  express  an  in- 
tuitive certainty  in  intellectual  terms  lies  at  the  root 
of  the  many  superficial  contradictions  in  his  work, 
and  of  the  deeper  contradiction  which  forms,  as  it 
were,  the  inward  rhythm  of  his  three  great  books. 
He  seems  to  surge  upwards  on  a  passionate  wave  of 
revolutionary  ideas,  only  to  sink  back  into  the  calm 
of  conservative  or  quietist  conclusions.  M.  Masson 
has  certainly  observed  it  well. 

*  Le  premier  Discours  anathematise  les  sciences 
et  les  arts,  et  ne  voit  le  salut  que  dans  les  academies; 
le  Discours  sur  rinegalite  parait  detruire  tout  autorite, 
et  recommande   pourtant   "  Tobeissance  scrupuleuse 

25 


Aspects  of  Literature 

aux  lois  et  aux  hommes  qui  en  sont  les  auteurs '*: 
la  Nouvelle  Heloise  preche  d'abord  remancipation 
sentimentale,  et  proclame  la  suprematie  des  droits 
de  la  passion,  mais  elle  aboutit  a  exalter  la  fidelite 
conjugale,  a  consolider  les  grands  devoirs  familiaux 
et  sociaux.  Le  Vicaire  Savoyard  nous  reserve  la 
meme  surprise.' 

To  the  revolutionaries  of  his  age  he  was  a  renegade 
and  a  reactionary;  to  the  Conservatives,  a  subversive 
charlatan.  Yet  he  was  in  truth  only  a  man  stricken 
by  the  demon  of  *  la  bonne  foi,'  and,  Hke  many  men 
devoured  by  the  passion  of  spiritual  honesty,  in  his 
secret  heart  he  believed  in  his  similitude  to  Christ. 
*  Je  ne  puis  pas  souffrir  les  tiedes,*  he  wrote  to  Madame 
Latour  in  1762,  *  quiconque  ne  se  passionne  pas  pour 
moi  n'est  pas  digne  de  moi.'  There  is  no  mistaking 
the  accent,  and  it  sounds  more  plainly  still  in  the 
Dialogues,  He,  too,  was  persecuted  for  righteousness* 
sake,  because  he,  too,  proclaimed  that  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  was  within  men. 

And  what,  indeed,  have  material  things  to  do 
with  the  purification  and  the  peace  of  the  soul  ? 
World-shattering  arguments  and  world-preserving 
conclusions — this  is  the  inevitable  paradox  which 
attends  the  attempt  to  record  truth  seen  by  the  eye  of 
the  soul  in  the  language  of  the  market-place.  The 
eloquence  and  the  inspiration  may  descend  upon  the 
man  so  that  he  writes  believing  that  all  men  will 
understand.  He  wakes  in  the  morning  and  he  is 
afraid,  not  of  his  own  words  whose  deeper  truth  he 
does  not  doubt,  but  of  the  incapacity  of  mankind  to 
understand  him.  They  will  read  in  the  letter  what 
26 


The  Re/igio7i  of  Rousseau 

was  written  in  the  spirit;  their  eyes  will  see  the  words, 
but  their  ears  will  be  stopped  to  the  music.  The 
mystique^  as  Peguy  would  have  said,  will  be  degraded 
into  politique.  To  guard  himself  against  this  un- 
hallowed destiny,  at  the  last  Rousseau  turns  with 
decision  and  in  the  language  of  his  day  rewrites  the 
hard  saying,  that  the  things  which  are  Caesar's  shall 
be  rendered  unto  Caesar. 

In  the  light  of  this  necessary  truth  all  the  contra- 
dictions which  have  been  discovered  in  Rousseau's 
work  fade  away.    That  famous  confusion  concerning 

*  the  natural  man,*  whom  he  presents  to  us  now  as  a 
historic  fact,  now  as  an  ideal,  took  its  rise,  not  in  the 
mind  of  Jean-Jacques,  but  in  the  minds  of  his  critics. 
The  Contrat  Social  is  a  parable  of  the  soul  of  man,  like 
the  Republic  of  Plato.  The  truth  of  the  human  soul 
is  its  implicit  perfection ;  to  that  reality  material  history 
is  irrelevant,  because  the  anatomy  of  the  soul  is 
eternal.  And  as  for  the  nature  of  this  truth,  *  it  is 
true  so  soon  as  it  is  felt.'  When  the  Savoyard  Vicar, 
after  accepting  all  the  destructive  criticism  of  religious 
dogma,  turned  to  the  Gospel  story  with  the  immortal 

*  Ce  n'est  pas  ainsi  qu'on  invente,'  he  was  only 
anticipating  what  Jean-Jacques  was  to  say  of  himself 
before  his  death,  that  there  was  a  sign  in  his  work 
which  could  not  be  imitated,  and  which  acted  only  at 
the  level  of  its  source.  We  may  call  Jean-Jacques 
religious  because  we  have  no  other  word;  but  the 
word  would  be  more  truly  applied  to  the  reverence 
felt  towards  such  a  man  than  to  his  own  emotion.  He 
was  driven  to  speak  of  God  by  the  habit  of  his  child- 
hood and  the  deficiency  of  a  language  shaped  by 
the  intellect  and  not  by  the  soul.     But  his  deity  was 

27 


Aspects  of  Literature 

one  whom  neither  the  Catholic  nor  the  Reformed 
Church  could  accept,  for  He  was  truly  a  God  who 
does  not  dwell  in  temples  made  with  hands.  The 
respect  he  owed  to  God,  said  the  Vicar,  was  such  that 
he  could  affirm  nothing  of  Him.  And,  again,  still 
more  profoundly,  he  said,  *  He  is  to  our  souls  what 
our  soul  is  to  our  body.*  That  is  the  mystical  utterance 
of  a  man  who  was  no  mystic,  but  of  one  who  found 
his  full  communion  in  the  beatific  dolce  jar  niente  of 
the  Lake  of  Bienne.  Jean-Jacques  was  set  apart 
from  his  generation,  because,  like  Malvolio,  he  thought 
highly  of  the  soul  and  in  nowise  approved  the  con- 
clusions of  his  fellows;  and  he  was  fortunate  to  the 
last,  in  spite  of  what  some  are  pleased  to  call  his  mad- 
ness (which  was  indeed  only  his  flaming  and  uncom- 
prehending indignation  at  the  persecution  inevitably 
meted  out  by  those  who  have  only  a  half  truth  to  one 
who  has  the  whole),  because  he  enjoyed  the  certainty 
that  his  high  appraisement  of  the  soul  was  justified. 

[march,  191 8. 


28 


The  Poetry  of  Edward  Thomas 

We  believe  that  when  we  are  old  and  we  turn  back 
to  look  among  the  ruins  with  which  our  memory 
will  be  strewn  for  the  evidence  of  life  which  disaster 
could  not  kill,  we  shall  find  it  in  the  poems  of  Edward 
Thomas.^  They  will  appear  like  the  faint,  indelible 
writing  of  a  palimpsest  over  which  in  our  hours  of 
exaltation  and  bitterness  more  resonant,  yet  less 
enduring,  words  were  inscribed;  or  they  will  be  like 
a  phial  discovered  in  the  ashes  of  what  was  once  a 
mighty  city.  There  will  be  the  triumphal  arch 
standing  proudly;  the  very  tombs  of  the  dead  will 
seem  to  share  its  monumental  magnificence.  Yet 
we  will  turn  from  them  all,  from  the  victory  and 
sorrow  alike,  to  this  faintly  gleaming  bubble  of  glass 
that  will  hold  captive  the  phantasm  of  a  fragrance  of 
the  soul.  By  it  some  dumb  and  doubtful  knowledge 
will  be  evoked  to  tremble  on  the  edge  of  our  minds. 
We  shall  reach  back,  under  its  spell,  beyond  the 
larger  impulses  of  a  resolution  and  a  resignation  which 
will  have  become  a  part  of  history,  to  something  less 
solid  and  more  permanent  over  which  they  passed 
and  which  they  could  not  disturb. 

Our  consciousness  will  have  its  record.  The 
tradition  of  England  in  battle  has  its  testimony;  our 
less  traditional  despairs  will  be  compassed  about  by  a 
crowd  of  witnesses.  But  it  might  so  nearly  have  been 
in  vain  that  we  should  seek  an  echo  of  that  which 
smiled  at  the  conclusions  of  our  consciousness.  The 
1  Last  Poems.    By  Edward  Thomas.    (Selwyn  &  Blount.) 

29 


Aspects  of  Literature 

subtler  faiths  might  so  easily  have  fled  through  our 
harsh  fingers.  When  the  sound  of  the  bugles  died, 
having  crowned  reveille  with  the  equal  challenge  of 
the  last  post,  how  easily  we  might  have  been  persuaded 
that  there  was  a  silence,  if  there  had  not  been  one 
whose  voice  rose  only  so  little  above  that  of  the  winds 
and  trees  and  the  life  of  undertone  we  share  with 
them  as  to  make  us  first  doubt  the  silence  and  then 
lend  an  ear  to  the  incessant  pulses  of  which  it  is 
composed.  The  infinite  and  infinitesimal  vague 
happinesses  and  immaterial  alarms,  terrors  and  beauties 
scared  by  the  sound  of  speech,  memories  and  forget- 
tings  that  the  touch  of  memory  itself  crumbles  into 
dust — this  very  texture  of  the  life  of  the  soul  might 
have  been  a  gray  background  over  which  tumultuous 
existence  passed  unheeding  had  not  Edward  Thomas 
so  painfully  sought  the  angle  from  which  it  appears, 
to  the  eye  of  eternity,  as  the  enduring  warp  of  the 
more  gorgeous  woof. 

The  emphasis  sinks;  the  stresses  droop  away.  To 
exacter  knowledge  less  charted  and  less  conquerable 
certainties  succeed;  truths  that  somehow  we  cannot 
make  into  truths,  and  that  have  therefore  some  strange 
mastery  over  us ;  laws  of  our  common  substance  which 
we  cannot  make  human  but  only  humanise;  loyalties 
we  do  not  recognise  and  dare  not  disregard;  beauties 
which  deny  communion  with  our  beautiful,  and  yet 
compel  our  souls.     So  the  sedge-warbler's 

*  Song  that  lacks  all  words,  all  melody. 
All  sweetness  almost,  was  dearer  then  to  me 
Than  sweetest  voice  that  sings  in  tune  sweet 
words.* 

30 


The  Poetry  of  Edward  Thomas 

Not  that  the  unheard  melodies  were  sweeter  than  the 
heard  to  this  dead  poet.  We  should  be  less  confident 
of  his  quality  if  he  had  not  been,  both  in  his 
knowledge  and  his  hesitations,  the  child  of  his  age. 
Because  he  was  this,  the  melodies  were  heard;  but 
they  were  not  sweet.  They  made  the  soul  sensible 
of  attachments  deeper  than  the  conscious  mind's 
ideals,  whether  of  beauty  or  goodness.  Not  to  some- 
thing above  but  to  something  beyond  are  we  chained, 
for  all  that  we  forget  our  fetters,  or  by  some  queer 
trick  of  self-hallucination  turn  them  into  golden 
crowns.  But  perhaps  the  finer  task  of  our  humanity 
is  to  turn  our  eyes  calmly  into  *  the  dark  backward 
and  abysm  *  not  of  time,  but  of  the  eternal  present  on 
whose  pinnacle  we  stand. 

*  I  have  mislaid  the  key.     I  sniff  the  spray 
And  think  of  nothing;   I  see  and  hear  nothing; 
Yet  seem,  too,  to  be  listening,  lying  in  wait 
For  what  I  should,  yet  never  can,  remember. 
No  garden  appears,  no  path,  no  child  beside. 
Neither  father  nor  mother,  nor  any  playmate; 
Only  an  avenue,  dark,  nameless  without  end.' 

So,  it  seems,  a  hundred  years  have  found  us  out. 
We  come  no  longer  trailing  clouds  of  glory.  We  are 
that  which  we  are,  less  and  more  than  our  strong 
ancestors;  less,  in  that  our  heritage  does  not  descend 
from  on  high,  more,  in  that  we  know  ourselves  for 
less.  Yet  our  chosen  spirit  is  not  wholly  secure  in  his 
courage.  He  longs  not  merely  to  know  in  what  un- 
differentiated oneness  his  roots  are  fixed,  but  to 
discover  it  beautiful.     Not  even  yet  is  it  sufficient  to 

31 


Aspects  of  Literature  )^ 

have  a  premonition  of  the  truth ;  the  truth  must  wear 
a  familiar  colour. 

*  This  heart,  some  fraction  of  me,  happily 
Floats  through  the  window  even  now  to  a  tree 
Down  in  the  misting,  dim-lit,  quiet  vale, 
Not  like  a  peewit  that  returns  to  wail 
For  something  it  has  lost,  but  like  a  dove 
That  slants  unswerving  to  its  home  and  love. 
There  I  find  my  rest,  and  through  the  dark  air 
Flies  what  yet  lives  in  me.     Beauty  is  there.* 

Beauty,  yes,  perhaps ;  but  beautiful  by  virtue  of  its 
coincidence  with  the  truth,  as  there  is  beauty  in  those 
lines  securer  and  stronger  far  than  the  melody  of  their 
cadence,  because  they  tell  of  a  loyalty  of  man's  being 
which,  being  once  made  sensible  of  it,  he  cannot 
gainsay.  Whence  we  all  come,  whither  we  must  all 
make  our  journey,  there  is  home  indeed.  But  neces- 
sity, not  remembered  delights,  draws  us  thither.  That 
which  we  must  obey  is  our  father  if  we  will ;  but  let 
us  not  delude  ourselves  into  the  expectation  of  kind- 
ness and  the  fatted  calf,  any  more  than  we  dare  believe 
that  the  love  which  moves  the  sun  and  the  other  stars 
has  in  it  any  charity.  We  may  be,  we  are,  the  children 
of  the  universe;  but  we  have  *  neither  father  nor 
mother  nor  any  playmate.* 

And  Edward  Thomas  knew  this.  The  knowledge 
should  be  the  common  property  of  the  poetry  of  our 
time,  marking  it  off  from  what  went  before  and  from 
what  will  come  after.  We  believe  that  it  will  be  found 
to  be  so;  and  that  the  presence  of  this  knowledge, 
and  the  quality  which  this  knowledge  imparts,  makes 
32 


The  Poetry  of  Rdward  Thomas 

Edward  Thomas  more  than  one  among  his  contem- 
poraries. He  is  their  chief.  He  challenges  other 
regions  in  the  hinterland  of  our  souls.  Yet  how  shall 
we  describe  the  narrowness  of  the  line  which  divides 
his  province  from  theirs,  or  the  only  half-conscious 
subtlety  of  the  gesture  with  which  he  beckons  us  aside 
from  trodden  and  familiar  paths  ?  The  difference, 
the  sense  of  departure,  is  perhaps  most  apparent  in  this, 
that  he  knows  his  beauty  is  not  beautiful,  and  his 
home  no  home  at  all. 

*  This  is  my  grief.     That  land, 
My  home,  I  have  never  seen. 
No  traveller  tells  of  it. 
However  far  he  has  been. 

*  And  could  I  discover  it 

I  fear  my  happiness  there. 

Or  my  pain,  might  be  dreams  of  return 

To  the  things  that  were.* 

Great  poetry  stands  in  this,  that  it  expresses  man*s 
allegiance  to  his  destiny.  In  every  age  the  great  poet 
triumphs  in  all  that  he  knows  of  necessity;  thus  he 
is  the  world  made  vocal.  Other  generations  of  men 
may  know  more,  but  their  increased  knowledge  will 
not  diminish  from  the  magnificence  of  the  music  which 
he  has  made  for  the  spheres.  The  known  truth  alters 
from  age  to  age;  but  the  thrill  of  the  recognition  of 
the  truth  stands  fast  for  all  our  human  eternity.  Year 
by  year  the  universe  grows  vaster,  and  man,  by  virtue 
of  the  growing  brightness  of  his  little  lamp,  sees 
himself  more  and  more  as  a  child  born  in  the  midst  of 

33 


Aspects  of  Literature 

a  dark  forest,  and  finds  himself  less  able  to  claim  the 
obeisance  of  the  all.  Yet  if  he  would  be  a  poet,  and 
not  a  harper  of  threadbare  tunes,  he  must  at  each  step 
in  the  downward  passing  from  his  sovereignty, 
recognise  what  is  and  celebrate  it  as  what  must  be. 
Thus  he  regains,  by  another  path,  the  supremacy  which 
he  has  forsaken. 

Edward  Thomas's  poetry  has  the  virtue  of  this 
recognition.  It  may  be  said  that  his  universe  was  not 
vaster  but  smaller  than  the  universe  of  the  past,  for 
its  bounds  were  largely  those  of  his  own  self.  It  is, 
even  in  material  fact,  but  half  true.  None  more  closely 
than  he  regarded  the  living  things  of  earth  in  all  their 
quarters.  *  After  Rain  '  is,  for  instance,  a  very 
catalogue  of  the  texture  of  nature's  visible  garment, 
freshly  put  on,  down  to  the  little  ash-leaves 

*.  .  .  thinly  spread 
In  the  road,  like  little  black  fish,  inlaid 
As  if  they  played.' 

But  it  is  true  that  these  objects  of  vision  were  but 
the  occasion  of  the  more  profound  discoveries  within 
the  region  of  his  own  soul.  There  he  discovered 
vastness  and  illimitable  vistas;  found  himself  to  be 
an  eddy  in  the  universal  flux,  driven  whence  and 
whither  he  knew  not,  conscious  of  perpetual  instability, 
the  meeting  place  of  mighty  impacts  of  which  only 
the  farthest  ripple  agitates  the  steady  moonbeam  of 
the  waking  mind.  In  a  sense  he  did  no  more  than  to 
state  what  he  found,  sometimes  in  the  more  familiar 
language  of  beauties  lost,  mourned  for  lost,,  and 
irrecoverable. 

34 


The  Poetry  of  Rdward  Thomas 

*  The  simple  lack 

Of  her  is  more  to  me 
Than  other's  presence. 
Whether  life  splendid  be 
Or  utter  black. 

*  I  have  not  seen, 

I  have  no  news  of  her; 
I  can  tell  only 
She  is  not  here,  but  there 
She  might  have  been. 

*  She  is  to  be  kissed 
Only  perhaps  by  me; 
She  may  be  seeking 
Me  and  no  other;  she 
May  not  exist.' 

That  search  lies  nearer  to  the  norm  of  poetry.  We 
might  register  its  wistfulness,  praise  the  appealing 
nakedness  of  its  diction  and  pass  on.  If  that  were 
indeed  the  culmination  of  Edward  Thomas's  poetical 
quest,  he  would  stand  securely  enough  with  others 
of  his  time.  But  he  reaches  further.  In  the  verses 
on  his  *  home,'  which  we  have  already  quoted,  he 
passes  beyond  these  limits.  He  has  still  more  to  tell 
of  the  experience  of  the  soul  fronting  its  own  infinity : — 

*  So  memory  made 
Parting  to-day  a  double  pain : 
First  because  it  was  parting;  next 
Because  the  ill  it  ended  vexed 

And  mocked  me  from  the  past  again. 


Aspects  of  Literature 

Not  as  what  had  been  remedied 
Had  I  gone  on, — not  that,  ah  no! 
But  as  itself  no  longer  woe.' 

There  speaks  a  deep  desire  born  only  of  deep  know- 
ledge. Only  those  who  have  been  struck  to  the 
heart  by  a  sudden  awareness  of  the  incessant  not- 
being  which  is  all  we  hold  of  being,  know  the  longing 
to  arrest  the  movement  even  at  the  price  of  the  per- 
petuation of  their  pain.  So  it  was  that  the  moments 
which  seemed  to  come  to  him  free  from  the  infirmity 
of  becoming  haunted  and  held  him  most. 

*  Often  I  had  gone  this  way  before, 
But  now  it  seemed  I  never  could  be 
And  never  had  been  anywhere  else.' 

To  cheat  the  course  of  time,  which  is  only  the  name 
with  which  we  strive  to  cheat  the  flux  of  things,  and 
to  anchor  the  soul  to  something  that  was  not  instantly 
engulfed — 

*  In  the  undefiled 
Abyss  of  what  can  never  be  again.' 

Sometimes  he  looked  within  himself  for  the  monition 
which  men  have  felt  as  the  voice  of  the  eternal  memory; 
sometimes,  like  Keats,  but  with  none  of  the  intoxica- 
tion of  Keats's  sense  of  a  sharing  in  victory,  he  grasped 
at  the  recurrence  of  natural  things,  *  the  pure  thrush 
word,'  repeated  every  spring,  the  law  of  wheeling 
rooks,  or  to  the  wind  *  that  was  old  when  the  gods 
were  young,'  as  in  this  profoundly  typical  sensing  of 
*  A  New  House.' 

36 


The  Poetry  of  Rclward  Thomas 

*  All  was  foretold  me;  naught 

Could  I  foresee; 
But  I  learned  how  the  wind  would  sound 
After  these  things  should  be.' 

But  he  could  not  rest  even  there.  There  was, 
indeed,  no  anchorage  in  the  enduring  to  be  found  by 
one  so  keenly  aware  of  the  flux  within  the  soul  itself. 
The  most  powerful,  the  most  austerely  imagined  poem 
in  this  book  is  that  entitled  *The  Other,'  which,  apart 
from  its  intrinsic  appeal,  shows  that  Edward  Thomas 
had  something  at  least  of  the  power  to  create  the 
myth  which  is  the  poet's  essential  means  of  triangulat- 
ing the  unknown  of  his  emotion.  Had  he  lived  to 
perfect  himself  in  the  use  of  this  instrument,  he  might 
have  been  a  great  poet  indeed.  *  The  Other  '  tells 
of  his  pursuit  of  himself,  and  how  he  overtook  his 
soul. 

*  And  now  I  dare  not  follow  after 
Too  close.     I  try  to  keep  in  sight. 
Dreading  his  frown  and  worse  his  laughter, 
I  steal  out  of  the  wood  to  light; 

I  see  the  swift  shoot  from  the  rafter 

By  the  window :  ere  I  alight 

I  wait  and  hear  the  starlings  wheeze 

And  nibble  like  ducks:  I  wait  his  flight. 

He  goes :  I  follow :  no  release 

Until  he  ceases.    Then  I  also  shall  cease.' 

No;  not  a  great  poet,  will  be  the  final  sentence, 
when  the  palimpsest  is  read  with  the  calm  and  un- 
divided attention  that  is  its  due,  but  one  who  had 
many  (and  among  them  the  chief)  of  the  qualities  of 

37 


Aspects  of  Literature 

a  great  poet.  Edward  Thomas  was  like  a  musician 
who  noted  down  themes  that  summon  up  forgotten 
expectations.  Whether  the  genius  to  work  them  out 
to  the  limits  of  their  scope  and  implication  was  in 
him  we  do  not  know.  The  life  of  literature  was  a 
hard  master  to  him;  and  perhaps  the  opportunity  he 
would  eagerly  have  grasped  was  denied  him  by 
circumstance.  But,  if  his  compositions  do  not,  his 
themes  will  never  fail — of  so  much  we  are  sure — to 
awaken  unsuspected  echoes  even  in  unsuspecting 
minds.  [january,  1919. 


38 


Mr  Teats  s  Swan  Song 

In  the  preface  to  The  Wild  Swans  at  Coole^^  Mr  W. 
B.  Yeats  speaks  of  *  the  phantasmagoria  through  which 
alone  I  can  express  my  convictions  about  the  world.* 
The  challenge  could  hardly  be  more  direct.  At  the 
threshold  we  are  confronted  with  a  legend  upon  the 
door-post  which  gives  us  the  essential  plan  of  all 
that  we  shall  find  in  the  house  if  we  enter  in.  There 
are,  it  is  true,  a  few  things  capable  of  common  use, 
verses  written  in  the  seeming-strong  vernacular  of 
literary  Dublin,  as  it  were  a  hospitable  bench  placed 
outside  the  door.  They  are  indeed  inside  the  house, 
but  by  accident  or  for  temporary  shelter.  They  do 
not,  as  the  phrase  goes,  belong  to  the  scheme,  for 
they  are  direct  transcriptions  of  the  common  reality, 
whether  found  in  the  sensible  world  or  the  emotion 
of  the  mind.  They  are,  from  Mr  Yeats*s  angle  of 
vision  (as  indeed  from  our  own),  essentially  vers 
d' occasion. 

The  poet's  high  and  passionate  argument  must  be 
sought  elsewhere,  and  precisely  in  his  expression  of 
his  convictions  about  the  world.  And  here,  on  the 
poet's  word  and  the  evidence  of  our  search,  we  shall 
find  phantasmagoria,  ghostly  symbols  of  a  truth 
which  cannot  be  otherwise  conveyed,  at  least  by  Mr 
Yeats.  To  this,  in  itself,  we  make  no  demur.  The 
poet,  if  he  is  a  true  poet,  is  driven  to  approach  the 
highest  reality  he  can  apprehend.  He  cannot  trans- 
cribe   it    simply    because    he    does    not    possess    the 

1  The  Wild  Swans  at  Coole.     By  W.  B.  Yeats.     (Macmillan.) 
A.L.  D  39 


Aspects  of  Literature 

necessary  apparatus  of  knowledge,  and  because  if 
he  did  possess  it  his  passion  would  flag.  It  is  not 
often  that  Spinoza  can  disengage  himself  to  write  as 
he  does  at  the  beginning  of  the  third  book  of  the 
Ethics,  nor  could  Lucretius  often  kindle  so  great  a 
fire  in  his  soul  as  that  which  made  his  material 
incandescent  in  Mneadum  genetrix.  Therefore  the 
poet  turns  to  myth  as  a  foundation  upon  which  he 
can  explicate  his  imagination.  He  may  take  his 
myth  from  legend  or  familiar  history,  or  he  may 
create  one  for  himself  anew;  but  the  function  it 
fulfils  is  always  the  same.  It  supplies  the  elements 
with  which  he  can  build  the  structure  of  his  parable, 
upon  which  he  can  make  it  elaborate  enough  to 
convey  the  multitudinous  reactions  of  his  soul  to  the 
world. 

But  between  myths  and  phantasmagoria  there  is 
a  great  gulf.  The  structural  possibilities  of  the  myth 
depend  upon  its  intelligibility.  The  child  knows 
upon  what  drama,  played  in  what  world,  the  curtain 
will  rise  when  he  hears  the  trumpet-note ;  *  Of  man's 
first  disobedience.  .  .  .*  And,  even  when  the  poet 
turns  from  legend  and  history  to  create  his  own 
myth,  he  must  make  one  whose  validity  is  visible,  if 
he  is  not  to  be  condemned  to  the  sterility  of  a  coterie. 
The  lawless  and  fantastic  shapes  of  his  own  imagination 
need,  even  for  their  own  perfect  embodiment,  the 
discipline  of  the  common  perception.  The  phantoms 
of  the  individual  brain,  left  to  their  own  waywardness, 
lose  all  solidity  and  become  like  primary  forms  of 
life,  instead  of  the  penultimate  forms  they  should  be. 
For  the  poet  himself  must  move  securely  among  his 
visions;  they  must  be  not  less  certain  and  steadfast 
40 


Mr  Teats' s  Swan  Song 

thanmen  are.  To  anchor  them  he  needs  intelligible 
myth.  Nothing  less  than  a  supremely  great  genius 
ofn^'save  him  if  he  ventures  into  the  vast  without 
a  landmark  visible  to  other  eyes  than  his  own.  Blake 
had  a  supremely  great  genius  and  was  saved  in  part. 
The  masculine  vigour  of  his  passion  gave  stability  to 
the  figures  of  his  imagination.  They  are  heroes 
because  they  are  made  to  speak  like  heroes.  Even  in 
Blake's  most  recondite  work  there  is  always  the 
moment  when  the  clouds  are  parted  and  we  recognise 
the  austere  and  awful  countenances  of  gods.  The 
phantasmagoria  of  the  dreamer  have  been  mastered 
by  the  sheer  creative  will  of  the  poet.  Like  Jacob, 
he  wrestled  until  the  going  down  of  the  sun  with  his 
angel  and  would  not  let  him  go. 

The  effort  which  such  momentary  victories  demand 
is  almost  superhuman;  yet  to  possess  the  power  to 
exert  it  is  the  sole  condition  upon  which  a  poet  may 
plunge  into  the  world  of  phantasms.  Mr  Yeats  has 
too  little  of  the  power  to  vindicate  himself  from  the 
charge  of  idle  dreaming.  He  knows  the  problem; 
perhaps  he  has  also  known  the  struggle.  But  the 
very  terms  in  which  he  suggests  it  to  us  subtly  convey 
a  sense  of  impotence : — 

Hands,  do  what  you're  bid; 
Bring  the  balloon  of  the  mind 
That  bellies  and  drags  in  the  wind 
Into  its  narrow  shed. 

The  languor  and  ineffectuality  of  the  image  tell 
us  clearly  how  the  poet  has  failed  in  his  larger  task; 
its  exactness,  its  precise  expression  of  an  ineffectuality 

41 


Aspects  of  Literature 

made  conscious  and  condoned,  bears  equal  witness 
to  the  poet's  minor  probity.  He  remains  an  artist 
by  determination,  even  though  he  returns  downcast 
and  defeated  from  the  great  quest  of  poetry.  We 
were  inclined  at  first,  seeing  those  four  lines  enthroned 
in  majestic  isolation  on  a  page,  to  find  in  them  evidence 
of  an  untoward  conceit.  Subsequently  they  have 
seemed  to  reveal  a  splendid  honesty.  Although  it 
has  little  mysterious  and  haunting  beauty,  The  Wild 
Swans  at  Cook  is  indeed  a  swan  song.  It  is  eloquent 
of  final  defeat;  the  following  of  a  lonely  path  has 
ended  in  the  poet's  sinking  exhausted  in  a  wilderness 
of  gray.  Not  even  the  regret  is  passionate;  it  is 
pitiful. 

*  I  am  worn  out  with  dreams, 
A  weather-worn,  marble  triton 
Among  the  streams ; 
And  all  day  long  I  look 
Upon  this  lady's  beauty 
As  though  I  had  found  in  book 
A  pictured  beauty, 
Pleased  to  have  filled  the  eyes 
Or  the  discerning  ears, 
Delighted  to  be  but  wise. 
For  men  improve  with  the  years ; 
And  yet,  and  yet 
Is  this  my  dream,  or  the  truth  ? 
O  would  that  we  had  met 
When  I  had  my  burning  youth ; 
But  I  grow  old  among  dreams, 
A  weather-worn,  marble  triton 
Among  the  streams.' 
42 


Mr  Yeats' s  Swan  Song 

It  is  pitiful  because,  even  now  in  spite  of  all  his 
honesty,  the  poet  mistakes  the  cause  of  his  sorrow. 
He  is  worn  out  not  with  dreams,  but  with  the  vain 
effort  to  master  them  and  submit  them  to  his  own 
creative  energy.  He  has  not  subdued  them  nor 
built  a  new  world  from  them ;  he  has  merely  followed 
them  like  will-o'-the-wisps  away  from  the  world  he 
knew.  Now,  possessing  neither  world,  he  sits  by  the 
edge  of  a  barren  road  that  vanishes  into  a  no-man's 
land,  where  is  no  future,  and  whence  there  is  no  way 
back  to  the  past. 

*  My  country  is  Kiltartan  Cross, 
My  countrymen  Kiltartan 's  poor; 
N6  likely  end  could  bring  them  loss 
Or  leave  them  happier  than  before.* 

It  may  be  that  Mr  Yeats  has  succumbed  to  the 
malady  of  a  nation.  We  do  not  know  whether  such 
things  are  possible;  we  must  consider  him  only  in 
and  for  himself.  From  this  angle  we  can  regard  him 
only  as  a  poet  whose  creative  vigour  has  failed  him 
when  he  had  to  make  the  highest  demands  upon  it. 
His  sojourn  in  the  world  of  the  imagination,  far 
from  enriching  his  vision,  has  made  it  infinitely 
tenuous.  Of  this  impoverishment,  as  of  all  else  that 
has  overtaken  him,  he  is  agonisedly  aware. 

*  I  would  find  by  the  edge  of  that  water 
The  collar-bone  of  a  hare. 
Worn  thin  by  the  lapping  of  the  water, 
And  pierce  it  through  with  a  gimlet,  and  stare 

43 


J 


— » 


Aspects  of  Literature 

At  the  old  bitter  world  where  they  marry  in 

churches, 
And  laugh  over  the  untroubled  water 
At  all  who  marry  in  churches, 
Through  the  white  thin  bone  of  a  hare.* 

Nothing  there  remains  of  the  old  bitter  world, 
which  for  all  its  bitterness  is  a  full  world  also;  but 
nothing  remains  of  the  sweet  world  of  imagination. 
Mr  Yeats  has  made  the  tragic  mistake  of  thinking 
that  to  contemplate  it  was  sufficient.  Had  he  been  a 
great  poet  he  would  have  made  it  his  own,  by  forcing 
it  into  the  fetters  of  speech.  By  re-creating  it,  he 
would  have  made  it  permanent;  he  would  have 
built  landmarks  to  guide  him  always  back  to  where 
the  effort  of  his  last  discovery  had  ended.  But  now 
there  remains  nothing  but  a  handful  of  the  symbols 
with  which  he  was  content: — 

*  A  Sphinx  with  woman  breast  and  lion  paw, 
A  Buddha,  hand  at  rest, 
Hand  lifted  up  that  blest; 
And  right  between  these  two  a  girl  at  play.' 

These  are  no  more  than  the  dry  bones  in  the  valley 
of  Ezekiel,  and,  alas!  there  is  no  prophetic  fervour 
to  make  them  live. 

Whether  Mr  Yeats,  by  some  grim  fatality,  mistook 
his  phantasmagoria  for  the  product  of  the  creative 
imagination,  or  whether  (as  we  prefer  to  believe)  he 
made  an  effort  to  discipline  them  to  his  poetic  purpose 
and  failed,  wc  cannot  certainly  say.  Of  this,  how- 
ever, we  are  certain,  that  somehow,  somewhere,  there 

44 


Mr  Teats' s  Swan  Song 

has  been  disaster.  He  is  empty,  now.  He  has  the 
apparatus  of  enchantment,  but  no  potency  in  his 
soul.  He  is  forced  to  fall  back  upon  the  artistic 
honesty  which  has  never  forsaken  him.  That  it  is  an 
insufficient  reserve  let  this  passage  show: — 

*  For  those  that  love  the  world  serve  it  in  action. 
Grow  rich,  popular,  and  full  of  influence. 
And  should  they  paint  or  write  still  it  is  action : 
The  struggle  of  the  fly  in  marmalade. 
The  rhetorician  would  deceive  his  neighbours, 
The  sentimentalist  himself;   while  art 
Is  but  a  vision  of  reality.  .  .  .' 

Mr  Yeats  is  neither  rhetorician  nor  sentimentalist. 
He  is  by  structure  and  impulse  an  artist.  But 
structure  and  impulse  are  not  enough.  Passionate 
apprehension  must  be  added  to  them.  Because  this 
is  lacking  in  Mr  Yeats  those  lines,  concerned  though 
they  are  with  things  he  holds  most  dear,  are  prose 
and  not  poetry.  [april,  191 9. 


45 


The  Wisdofn  of  Anatole  France 

How  few  are  the  wise  writers  who  remain  to  us  ? 
They  are  so  few  that  it  seems,  at  moments,  that 
wisdom,  like  justice  of  old^  is  withdrawing  from  the 
world,  and  that  when  their  fullness  of  years  is  accom- 
plished, as,  alas  !  it  soon  must  be,  the  wise  men  who 
will  leave  us  will  have  been  the  last  of  their  kind.  It 
is  true  that  something  akin  to  wisdom,  or  rather  a 
quality  whose  outward  resemblance  to  wisdom  can 
deceive  all  but  the  elect,  will  emerge  from  the  ruins  of 
war;  but  true  wisdom  is  not  created  out  of  the 
catastrophic  shock  of  disillusionment.  An  unexpected 
disaster  is  always  held  to  be  in  some  sort  undeserved. 
Yet  the  impulse  to  rail  at  destiny,  be  it  never  so 
human,  is  not  wise.  Wisdom  is  not  bitter;  at  worst 
it  is  bitter-sweet,  and  bitter-sweet  is  the  most  subtle 
and  lingering  savour  of  all. 

Let  us  not  say  in  our  haste,  that  without  wisdom 
we  are  lost.  Wisdom  is,  after  all,  but  one  attitude  to 
life  among  many.  It  happens  to  be  the  one  which 
will  stand  the  hardest  wear,  because  it  is  prepared  for 
all  ill-usage.  But  hard  wear  is  not  the  only  purpose 
which  an  attitude  may  serve.  We  may  demand  of  an 
attitude  that  it  should  enable  us  to  exact  the  utmost 
from  ourselves.  To  refuse  to  accommodate  oneself 
to  the  angularities  of  life  or  to  make  provision  before- 
hand for  its  catastrophes  is,  indeed,  folly;  but  it  may 
be  a  divine  folly.  It  is,  at  all  events,  a  folly  to  which 
poets  incline.  But  poets  are  not  wise;  indeed,  the 
poetry  of  true  wisdom  is  a  creation  which  can,  at  the 

46 


The  Wisdom  of  Anatole  France 

best,  be  but  dimly  imagined.  Perhaps,  of  them  all, 
Lucretius  had  the  largest  inkling  of  what  such  poetry 
might  be;  but  he  disqualified  himself  by  an  aptitude 
for  ecstasy,  which  made  his  poetry  superb  and  his 
wisdom  of  no  account.  To  acquiesce  is  wise;  to  be 
ecstatic  in  acquiescence  is  not  to  have  acquiesced  at 
all.  It  is  to  have  identified  oneself  with  an  imagined 
power  against  whose  manifestations,  in  those  moments 
when  no  ecstasy  remains,  one  rebels.  It  is  a  megalo- 
mania, a  sublime  self-deception,  a  heroic  attempt  to 
project  the  soul  on  to  the  side  of  destiny,  and  to  believe 
ourselves  the  masters  of  those  very  powers  which  have 
overwhelmed  us. 

Whether  the  present  generation  will  produce  great 
poetry,  we  do  not  know.  We  are  tolerably  certain 
that  it  will  not  produce  wise  men.  It  is  too  conscious 
of  defeat  and  too  embittered  to  be  wise.  Some  may 
seek  that  ecstasy  of  seeming  acquiescence  of  which  we 
have  spoken ;  others,  who  do  not  endeavour  to  escape 
the  pain  by  plunging  the  barb  deeper,  may  try  to 
shake  the  dust  of  life  from  off  their  feet.  Neither 
will  be  wise.  But  precisely  because  they  are  not  wise, 
they  will  seek  the  company  of  wise  men.  Their 
own  attitude  will  not  wear.  The  ecstasy  will  fail,  the 
will  to  renunciation  falter;  the  gray  reality  which 
permits  no  one  to  escape  it  altogether  will  filter  like  a 
mist  into  the  vision  and  the  cell.  Then  they  will 
turn  to  the  wise  men.  They  will  find  comfort  in  the 
smile  to  which  they  could  not  frame  their  own  lips, 
and  discover  in  it  more  sympathy  than  they  could 
hope  for. 

Among  the  wise  men  whom  they  will  surely  most 
frequent  will  be  Anatole  France.     His  company  is 

47 


Aspects  of  Literature 

constant ;  his  attitude  durable.  There  is  no  undertone 
of  anguish  in  his  work  like  that  which  gives  such 
poignant  and  haunting  beauty  to  Tchehov.  He  has 
never  suffered  himself  to  be  so  involved  in  life  as  to 
be  maimed  by  it.  But  the  price  he  has  paid  for  his 
safety  has  been  a  renunciation  of  experience.  Only 
by  being  involved  in  life,  perhaps  only  by  being 
maimed  by  it,  could  he  have  gained  that  bitterness  of 
knowledge  which  is  the  enemy  of  wisdom.  Not  that 
Anatole  France  made  a  deliberate  renunciation:  no 
man  of  his  humanity  would  of  his  own  will  turn 
aside.  It  was  instinct  which  guided  him  into  a 
sequestered  path,  which  ran  equably  by  the  side  of 
the  road  of  alternate  exaltation  and  catastrophe  which 
other  men  of  equal  genius  must  travel.  Therefore 
he  has  seen  men  as  it  were  in  profile  against  the  sky, 
but  never  face  to  face.  Their  runnings,  their  stumblings 
and  their  gesticulations  are  a  tumultuous  portion  of 
the  landscape  rather  than  symbols  of  an  intimate  and 
personal  possibility.  They  lend  a  baroque  enchant- 
ment to  the  scene. 

So  it  is  that  in  all  the  characters  of  Anatole 
France*s  work  which  are  not  closely  modelled  upon 
his  own  idiosyncrasy  there  is  something  of  the 
marionette.  They  are  not  the  less  charming  for  that; 
nor  do  they  lack  a  certain  logic,  but  it  is  not  the  logic 
of  personality.  They  are  embodied  comments  upon 
life,  but  they  do  not  live.  And  there  is  for  Anatole 
France,  while  he  creates  them,  and  for  us,  while  we 
read  about  them,  no  reason  why  they  should  live. 
For  living,  in  the  accepted  sense,  is  an  activity 
impossible  without  indulging  many  illusions;  and 
fervently  to  sympathise  with  characters  engaged  in 

48 


The  Wisdom  of  Anatole  France 

the  activity  demands  that  their  author  should  par- 
ticipate in  the  illusions.  He,  too,  must  be  surprised 
at  the  disaster  which  he  himself  has  proved  inevitable. 
It  is  not  enough  that  he  should  pity  them;  he  must 
share  in  their  effort,  and  be  discomfited  at  their 
discomfiture. 

Such  exercises  of  the  soul  are  impossible  to  a  real 
acquiescence,  which  cannot  even  permit  itself  the 
inspiration  of  the  final  illusion  that  the  wreck  of  human 
hopes,  being  ordained,  is  beautiful.  The  man  who 
acquiesces  is  condemned  to  stand  apart  and  contem- 
plate a  puppet-show  with  which  he  can  never  really 
sympathise. 

*  De  toutes  les  definitions  de  I'homme  la  plus 
mauvaise  me  parait  celle  qui  en  fait  un  animal  raison- 
nable.  Je  ne  me  vante  pas  excessivement  en  me 
donnant  pour  douc  de  plus  de  raison  que  la  plupart 
de  ceux  de  mes  semblables  que  j*ai  vus  de  pres  ou 
dont  j'ai  connu  I'histoire.  La  raison  habite  rarement 
les  ames  communes,  et  bien  plus  rarement  encore  les 
grands  esprits.  .  .  .  J'appelle  raisonnable  celui  qui 
accorde  sa  raison  particuliere  avec  la  raison  universelle, 
de  maniere  a  n'etre  jamais  trop  surpris  de  ce  qui 
arrive  et  a  s*y  accommoder  tant  bien  que  mal;  j'appelle 
raisonnable  celui  qui,  observant  le  desordre  de  la 
nature  et  la  folic  humaine,  ne  s'obstine  point  a  y 
voir  de  Tordre  et  de  la  sagesse;  j'appelle  raisonnable 
enfin  celui  qui  ne  s'efforce  pas  de  Tetre.' 

The  chasm  between  living  and  being  wise  (which 
is  to  be  raisonnable)  is  manifest.  The  condition  of 
living    is    to    be    perpetually    surprised,    incessandy 

49 


Aspects  of  Literature 

indignant  or  exultant,  at  what  happens.  To  bridge 
the  chasm  there  is  for  the  wise  man  only  one  way. 
He  must  cast  back  in  his  memory  to  the  time  when 
he,  too,  was  surprised  and  indignant.  No  man  is, 
after  all,  born  wise,  though  he  may  be  born  with  an 
instinct  for  wisdom.  Thus  Anatole  France  touches 
us  most  nearly  when  he  describes  his  childhood.  The 
innocent,  wayward,  positive,  romantic  little  Pierre 
Noziere^  is  a  human  being  to  a  degree  to  which  no 
other  figures  in  the  master's  comedy  of  unreason  are. 
And  it  is  evident  that  Anatole  France  himself  finds 
him  by  far  the  most  attractive  of  them  all.  He  can 
almost  persuade  himself,  at  moments,  that  he  still 
is  the  child  he  was,  as  in  the  exquisite  story  of  how, 
when  he  had  been  to  a  truly  royal  chocolate  shop,  he 
attempted  to  reproduce  its  splendours  in  play.  At 
one  point  his  invention  and  his  memory  failed  him, 
and  he  turned  to  his  mother  to  ask:  *  Est-ce  celui 
qui  vend  ou  celui  qui  achete  qui  donne  de  Targent  }  * 

*  Je  ne  devais  jamais  connaitre  le  prix  de  Targent. 
Tel  j'etais  k  trois  ans  ou  trois  ans  et  demi  dans  le 
cabinet  tapisse  de  boutons  de  roses,  tel  je  restai 
jusqu'a  la  vieillesse,  qui  m'est  l^gere,  comme  elle 
Test  a  toutes  les  ames  exemptes  d'avarice  et  d'orgueil. 
Non,  maman,  je  n'ai  jamais  connu  le  prix  de  Targent. 
Je  ne  le  connais  pas  encore,  ou  plutot  je  le  connais 
trop  bien.' 

To  know  a  thing  too  well  is  by  worlds  removed 
from  not  to  know  it  at  all,  and  Anatole  France  does 
not  elsewhere  similarly  attempt  to  indulge  the  illusion 
1  Le  Petit  Pierre.    Par  Anatole  France.    (Paris  :   Calmann-L6vy.) 

50 


The  Wisdom  of  Anatole  France 

of  unbroken  innocence.  He  who  refused  to  put  a 
mark  of  interrogation  after  *  What  is  God,'  in  defiance 
of  his  mother,  because  he  knew,  now  has  to  restrain 
himself  from  putting  one  after  everything  he  writes 
or  thinks.  *  Ma  pauvre  mere,  si  elle  vivait,  me  dirait 
peut-etre  que  maintenant  j'en  mets  trop.'  Yes, 
Anatole  France  is  wise,  and  far  removed  from  childish 
follies.  And,  perhaps,  it  is  precisely  because  of  his 
wisdom  that  he  can  so  exactly  discern  the  enchant- 
ment of  his  childhood.  So  few  men  grow  up.  The 
majority  remain  hobbledehoys  throughout  life;  all 
the  disabilities  and  none  of  the  unique  capacities  of 
childhood  remain.  There  are  a  few  who,  in  spite  of 
all  experience,  retain  both;  they  are  the  poets  and 
the  grands  esprits.  There  are  fewer  still  who  learn 
utterly  to  renounce  childish  things;  and  they  are 
the  wise  men. 

*  Je  suis  une  autre  personne  que  I'enfant  dont 
je  parle.  Nous  n'avons  plus  en  commun,  lui  et  moi, 
un  atome  de  substance  ni  de  pensee.  Maintenant 
qu'il  m'est  devenu  tout  a  fait  etranger,  je  puis  en 
sa  compagnie  me  distraire  de  la  mienne.  Je  Taime, 
moi  qui  ne  m'aime  ni  ne  me  ha'is.  II  m'est  doux  de 
vivre  en  pensee  les  jours  qu'il  vivait  et  je  souffre  de 
respirer  Fair  du  temps  ou  nous  sommes.* 

Not  otherwise  is  it  with  us  and  Anatole  France. 
We  may  have  little  in  common  with  his  thought — 
the  community  we  often  imagine  comes  of  self- 
deception — but  it  is  sweet  for  us  to  inhabit  his  mind 
for  a  while.  His  touch  is  potent  to  soothe  our  fitful 
fevers.  [april,  19 19. 

51 


Gerard  Manley  Hopkins 

Modern  poetry,  like  the  modern  consciousness  of 
which  it  is  the  epitome,  seems  to  stand  irresolute  at 
a  crossways  with  no  signpost.  It  is  hardly  conscious 
of  its  own  indecision,  which  it  manages  to  conceal 
from  itself  by  insisting  that  it  is  lyrical,  whereas  it  is 
merely  impressionist.  The  value  of  impressions 
depends  upon  the  quality  of  the  mind  which  receives 
and  renders  them,  and  to  be  lyrical  demands  at  least 
as  firm  a  temper  of  the  mind,  as  definite  and  unfaltering 
a  general  direction,  as  to  be  epic.  Roughly  speaking, 
the  present  poetical  fashion  may,  with  a  few  con- 
spicuous exceptions,  be  described  as  poetry  without 
tears.  The  poet  may  assume  a  hundred  personalities 
in  as  many  poems,  or  manifest  a  hundred  influences, 
or  he  may  work  a  single  sham  personality  threadbare 
or  render  piecemeal  an  undigested  influence.  What 
he  may  not  do,  or  do  only  at  the  risk  of  being  unfashion- 
able, is  to  attempt  what  we  may  call,  for  the  lack  of  a 
better  word,  the  logical  progression  of  an  ceuvre. 
One  has  no  sense  of  the  rhythm  of  an  achievement. 
There  is  an  output  of  scraps,  which  are  scraps,  not 
because  they  are  small,  but  because  one  scrap  stands 
in  no  organic  relation  to  another  in  the  poet's  work. 
Instead  of  lending  each  other  strength,  they  betray 
each  other's  weakness. 

Yet  the  organic  progression  for  which  we  look, 
generally  in  vain,  is  not  peculiar  to  poetic  genius  of 
the  highest  rank.  If  it  were,  we  might  be  accused 
of  mere  querulousness.  The  rhythm  of  personality 
52 


Gerard  Manley  Hopkins 

is  hard,  indeed,  to  achieve.  The  simple  mind  and 
the  single  outlook  are  now  too  rare  to  be  considered 
as  near  possibilities,  while  the  task  of  tempering  a 
mind  to  a  comprehensive  adequacy  to  modern  experi- 
ence is  not  an  easy  one.  The  desire  to  escape  and  the 
desire  to  be  lost  in  life  were  probably  never  so 
intimately  associated  as  they  are  now;  and  it  is  a 
little  preposterous  to  ask  a  moth  fluttering  round  a 
candle-flame  to  see  life  steadily  and  see  it  whole.  We 
happen  to  have  been  born  into  an  age  without  per- 
spective; hence  our  idolatry  for  the  one  living  poet 
and  prose  writer  who  has  it  and  comes,  or  appears 
to  come,  from  another  age.  But  another  rhythm  is 
possible.  No  doubt  it  would  be  mistaken  to  consider 
this  rhythm  as  in  fact  wholly  divorced  from  the  rhythm 
of  personality ;  it  probably  demands  at  least  a  minimum 
of  personal  coherence  in  its  possessor.  For  critical 
purposes,  however,  they  are  distinct.  This  second 
and  subsidiary  rhythm  is  that  of  technical  progression. 
The  single  pursuit  of  even  the  most  subordinate 
artistic  intention  gives  unity,  significance,  mass  to  a 
poet's  work.  When  Verlaine  declares  *  de  la  musique 
avant  toute  chose/  we  know  where  we  are.  And  we 
know  this  not  in  the  obvious  sense  of  expecting  his 
verse  to  be  predominantly  musical;  but  in  the 
more  important  sense  of  desiring  to  take  a  man 
seriously  who  declares  for  anything  *  avant  toute 
chose.' 

It  is  the  *  avant  toute  chose  '  that  matters,  not  as 
a  profession  of  faith — we  do  not  greatly  like  professions 
of  faith — but  as  the  guarantee  of  the  universal  in  the 
particular,  of  the  dianoia  in  the  episode.  It  is  the 
*  avant  toute  chose  '  that  we  chiefly  miss  in  modern 


Aspects  of  Literature 

poetry  and  modern  society  and  in  their  quaint  con- 
catenations. It  is  the  *  avant  toute  chose  '  that  leads 
us  to  respect  both  Mr  Hardy  and  Mr  Bridges,  though 
we  give  all  our  affection  to  one  of  them.  It  is  the 
*  avant  toute  chose  *  that  compels  us  to  admire  the 
poems  of  Gerard  Manley  Hopkins  ^ ;  it  is  the  *  avant 
toute  chose  *  in  his  work,  which,  as  we  believe,  would 
have  condemned  him  to  obscurity  to-day,  if  he  had 
not  (after  many  years)  had  Mr  Bridges,  who  was  his 
friend,  to  stand  sponsor  and  the  Oxford  University 
Press  to  stand  the  racket.  Apparently  Mr  Bridges 
himself  is  something  of  our  opinion,  for  his  introduc- 
tory sonnet  ends  on  a  disdainful  note: — 

*  Go  forth:   amidst  our  chaffinch  flock  display 
Thy  plumage  of  far  wonder  and  heavenward 
flight!  ' 

It  is  from  a  sonnet  written  by  Hopkins  to  Mr 
Bridges  that  we  take  the  most  concise  expression  of 
his  artistic  intention,  for  the  poet's  explanatory 
preface  is  not  merely  technical,  but  is  written  in  a 
technical  language  peculiar  to  himself.  Moreover, 
its  scope  is  small;  the  sonnet  tells  us  more  in  two 
lines  than  the  preface  in  four  pages. 

*  O  then  if  in  my  lagging  lines  you  miss 
The  roll,  the  rise,  the  carol,  the  creation.  .  .  .' 

There  is  his  *  avant  toute  chose.*  Perhaps  it  seems 
very  like  *  de  la  musique.'    But  it  tells  us  more  about 

1  Poems  of  Gerard  Manley  Hopkins.    Edited  with  notes  by  Robert 
Bridges.     (Oxford  :  University  Press.) 

54 


Gerard  Manley  Hopkins 

Hopkins's  music  than  Verlaine's  line  told  us  about 
his.  This  music  is  of  a  particular  kind,  not  the 
*  sanglots  du  violon/  but  pre-eminently  the  music  of 
song,  the  music  most  proper  to  lyrical  verse.  If  one 
were  to  seek  in  English  the  lyrical  poem  to  which 
Hopkins's  definition  could  be  most  fittingly  applied, 
one  would  find  Shelley's  *  Skylark.'  A  technical 
progression  onwards  from  the  *  Skylark  '  is  accordingly 
the  main  line  of  Hopkins's  poetical  evolution.  There 
are  other,  stranger  threads  interwoven;  but  this  is 
the  chief.  Swinburne,  rightly  enough  if  the  intention 
of  true  song  is  considered,  appears  hardly  to  have 
existed  for  Hopkins,  though  he  was  his  contemporary. 
There  is  an  element  of  Keats  in  his  epithets,  a  half- 
echo  in  *  whorlM  ear  '  and  *  lark-charmed  ' ;  there  is 
an  aspiration  after  Milton's  architectonic  in  the  con- 
struction of  the  later  sonnets  and  the  most  lucid  of 
the  fragments,  *  Epithalamion.'  But  the  central  point 
of  departure  is  the  '  Skylark.'  The  *  May  Magnificat ' 
is  evidence  of  Hopkins's  achievement  in  the  direct 
line: — 

*  Ask  of  her,  the  mighty  mother : 
Her  reply  puts  this  other 
Question :   What  is  Spring  ? — 
Growth  in  everything — 

Flesh  and  fleece,  fur  and  feather. 
Grass  and  greenworld  all  together; 
Star-eyed  strawberry-breasted 
Throstle  above  her  nested 
Cluster  of  bugle-blue  eggs  thin 
Forms  and  warms  the  life  within.  .  .   . 

A.L.  E  ^^ 


Aspects  of  Litter aticre 

.  .  .  When  drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple 
Bloom  lights  the  orchard-apple, 
And  thicket  and  thorp  are  merry 
With  silver-surfed  cherry, 

And  azuring-over  graybell  makes 

Wood  banks  and  brakes  wash  wet  like  lakes, 

And  magic  cuckoo-call 

Caps,  clears,  and  clinches  all.  .  .  .* 

That  is  the  primary  element  manifested  in  one  of  its 
simplest,  most  recognisable,  and  some  may  feel  most 
beautiful  forms.  But  a  melody  so  simple,  though  it 
is  perhaps  the  swiftest  of  which  the  English  language 
is  capable  without  the  obscurity  which  comes  of  the 
drowning  of  sense  in  sound,  did  not  satisfy  Hopkins. 
He  aimed  at  complex  internal  harmonies,  at  a  counter- 
point of  rhythm;  for  this  more  complex  element  he 
coined  an  expressive  word  of  his  own : — 

*  But  as  air,  melody,  is  what  strikes  me  most  of 
all  in  music  and  design  in  painting,  so  design,  pattern, 
or  what  I  am  in  the  habit  of  calling  inscape  is  what  I 
above  all  aim  at  in  poetry.* 

Here,  then,  in  so  many  words,  is  Hopkins*s  '  avant 
toute  chose  *  at  a  higher  level  of  elaboration.  *  Inscape  * 
is  still,  in  spite  of  the  apparent  differentiation,  musical; 
but  a  quality  of  formalism  seems  to  have  entered  with 
the  specific  designation.  With  formalism  comes 
rigidity;  and  in  this  case  the  rigidity  is  bound  to 
overwhelm  the  sense.  For  the  relative  constant  in  the 
composition  of  poetry  is  the  law  of  language  which 

56 


Gerard  Manley  Hopkiits 

admits  only  a  certain  amount  of  adaptation.  Musical 
design  must  be  subordinate  to  it,  and  the  poet  should 
be  aware  that  even  in  speaking  of  musical  design  he 
is  indulging  a  metaphor.  Hopkins  admitted  this, 
if  we  may  judge  by  his  practice,  only  towards  the 
end  of  his  life.  There  is  no  escape  by  sound  from  the 
meaning  of  the  posthumous  sonnets,  though  we  may 
hesitate  to  pronounce  whether  this  directness  was 
due  to  a  modification  of  his  poetical  principles  or  to 
the  urgency  of  the  content  of  the  sonnets,  which, 
concerned  with  a  matter  of  life  and  death,  would 
permit  no  obscuring  of  their  sense  for  musical 
reasons. 

*  I  wake  and  feel  the  fell  of  dark,  not  day. 
What  hours,  O  what  black  hours  we  have  spent 
This  night!   what  sights  you,  heart,  saw;   ways 

you  went! 
And  more  must  in  yet  longer  light's  delay. 

With  witness  I  speak  this.    But  where  I  say 
Hours  I  mean  years,  mean  life.    And  my  lament 
Is  cries  countless,  cries  like  dead  letters  sent 
To  dearest  him  that  lives,  alas!   away.' 

There  is  compression,  but  not  beyond  immediate 
comprehension;  music,  but  a  music  of  overtones; 
rhythm,  but  a  rhythm  which  explicates  meaning  and 
makes  it  more  intense. 

Between  the  *  May  Magnificat '  and  these  sonnets 
is  the  bulk  of  Hopkins's  poetical  work  and  his  peculiar 
achievement.  Perhaps  it  could  be  regarded  as  a 
phase  in  his  evolution  towards  the  *  more  balanced 
and  Miltonic  style  '  which  he  hoped  for,  and  of  which 

SI 


Aspects  of  Literature 

the  posthumous  sonnets  are  precursors;  but  the 
attempt  to  see  him  from  this  angle  would  be  perverse. 
Hopkins  was  not  the  man  to  feel,  save  on  exceptional 
occasions,  that  urgency  of  content  of  which  we  have 
spoken.  The  communication  of  thought  was  seldom 
the  dominant  impulse  of  his  creative  moment,  and  it 
is  curious  how  simple  his  thought  often  proves  to  be 
when  the  obscurity  of  his  language  has  been  penetrated. 
Musical  elaboration  is  the  chief  characteristic  of  his 
work,  and  for  this  reason  what  seem  to  be  the  strangest 
of  his  experiments  are  his  most  essential  achievement. 
So,  for  instance,  *  The  Golden  Echo  ' : — 

*  Spare! 

There  is  one,  yes,  I  have  one  (Hush  there!); 

Only  not  within  seeing  of  sun. 

Not  within  the  singeing  of  the  strong  sun, 

Tall  sun's  tingeing,  or  treacherous  the  tainting 
of  the  earth's  air. 

Somewhere  else  where  there  is,  ah,  well,  where! 
one. 

One.  Yes,  I  can  tell  such  a  key,  I  do  know  such 
a  place. 

Where,  whatever's  prized  and  passes  of  us, 
everything  that's  fresh  and  fast  flying  of 
us,  seems  to  us  sweet  of  us  and  swiftly  away 
with,  done  away  with,  undone. 

Undone,  done  with,  soon  done  with,  and  yet 
clearly  and  dangerously  sweet 

Of  us,  the  wimpled-water-dimpled,  not-by- 
morning-matched  face. 

The  flower  of  beauty,  fleece  of  beauty,  too  too 
apt  to,  ah  1   to  fleet, 

58 


Gerard  Manley  Hopkins 

Never  fleets  more,  fastened  with  the  tenderest 

truth 
To  its  own   best   being  and   its   loveliness   of 

youth.  .  .   .* 

Than  this,  Hopkins  truly  wrote,  *  I  never  did  anything 
more  musical/  By  his  own  verdict  and  his  own 
standards  it  is  therefore  the  finest  thing  that  Hopkins 
did.  Yet  even  here,  where  the  general  beauty  is 
undoubted,  is  not  the  music  too  obvious  ?  Is  it  not 
always  on  the  point  of  degenerating  into  a  jingle — as 
much  an  exhibition  of  the  limitations  of  a  poetical 
theory  as  of  its  capabilities  }  The  tyranny  of  the 
*  avant  toute  chose  *  upon  a  mind  in  which  the  other 
things  were  not  stubborn  and  self-assertive  is  apparent. 
Hopkins^s  mind  was  irresolute  concerning  the  quality 
of  his  own  poetical  ideal.  A  coarse  and  clumsy 
assonance  seldom  spread  its  snare  in  vain.  Exquisite 
openings  are  involved  in  disaster: — 

*  When  will  you  ever.  Peace,  wild  wood  dove,  shy 
wings  shut, 

Your  round  me  roaming  end,  and  under  be  my 
boughs  ? 

When,  when.  Peace,  will  you.  Peace  ?  I'll  not 
play  hypocrite 

To  own  my  heart:  I  yield  you  do  come  some- 
times; but 

That  piecemeal  peace  is  poor  peace.  What  pure 
peace.  .  .   .' 

And  the  more  wonderful  opening  of  *  Windhover  * 
likewise  sinks,  far  less  disastrously,  but  still  per- 
ceptibly:— 

59 


Aspects  of  Lite7^ature 

*  I  caught  this  morning  morning's  minion,  king- 
dom  of  daylight's    dauphin,    dapple-dawn- 
drawn  Falcon,  in  his  riding 
Of  the  rolling  level  underneath  him  steady 
air,  and  striding 
High  there,  how  he  rung  upon  the  rein  of  a 

wimpling  wing 
In  his  ecstasy  !   then  off,  off'  forth  on  swing, 
As  a  skate's  heel  sweeps  smooth  on  a  bow- 
bend;   the  hurl  and  the  gliding 
Rebuffed     the    big    wind.      My    heart    in 
hiding 
Stirred  for  a  bird, — the  achieve  of,  the  mastery 
of  the  thing!  ' 

We  have  no  doubt  that  *  stirred  for  a  bird  '  was  an 
added  excellence  to  the  poet's  ear;  to  our  sense  it  is 
a  serious  blemish  on  lines  which  have  *  the  roll,  the 
rise,  the  carol,  the  creation.* 

There  is  no  good  reason  why  we  should  give 
characteristic  specimens  of  the  poet's  obscurity,  since 
our  aim  is  to  induce  people  to  read  him.  The 
obscurities  will  slowly  vanish  and  something  of  the 
intention  appear;  and  they  will  find  in  him  many  of 
the  strange  beauties  won  by  men  who  push  on  to  the 
borderlands  of  their  science;  they  will  speculate 
whether  the  failure  of  his  whole  achievement  was  due 
to  the  starvation  of  experience  which  his  vocation 
imposed  upon  him,  or  to  a  fundamental  vice  in  his 
poetical  endeavour.  For  ourselves  we  believe  that 
the  former  was  the  true  cause.  His  *  avant  toute 
chose  '  whirling  dizzily  in  a  spiritual  vacuum,  met 
with  no  salutary  resistance  to  modify,  inform,  and 
60 


Gerard  Manley  IIopki7ts 

strengthen  it.     Hopkins  told  the  truth  of  himself — 
the  reason  why  he  must  remain  a  poets*  poet: — 

*  I  Vy-ant  the  one  rapture  of  an  inspiration. 
O  then  if  in  my  lagging  lines  you  miss 
The  roll,  the  rise,  the  carol,  the  creation. 
My  winter  world,  that  scarcely  yields  that  bliss 
Now,  yields  you,  with  some  sighs,  our  explanation.' 

[juNE,  191 9. 


61 


The  Problem  of  Keats 

It  is  a  subject  for  congratulation  that  a  second  edition 
of  Sir  Sidney  Colvin*s  life  of  Keats  ^  has  been  called 
for  by  the  public:  first,  because  it  is  a  good,  a  very 
good  book,  and  secondly,  because  all  evidence  of  a 
general  curiosity  concerning  a  poet  so  great  and  so 
greatly  to  be  loved  must  be  counted  for  righteousness. 
The  impassioned  and  intimate  sympathy  which  is 
felt — as  we  may  at  least  conclude — by  a  portion  of 
the  present  generation  for  Keats  is  a  motion  of  the 
consciousness  which  stands  in  a  right  and  natural 
order.  Keats  is  with  us;  and  it  argues  much  for  a 
generous  elasticity  in  Sir  Sidney  Colvin's  mind,  which 
we  have  neither  the  right  nor  the  custom  to  expect  in 
an  older  generation,  that  he  should  have  had  more 
than  a  sidelong  vision  of  at  least  one  aspect  of  the 
community  between  his  poet-hero  and  a  younger 
race  which  has  had  the  destiny  to  produce  far  more 
heroes  than  poets.  Commenting  upon  the  inability 
of  the  late  Mr  Courthope  to  appreciate  Keats,  Sir 
Sidney  writes: — 

*  He  supposed  that  Keats  was  indifferent  to 
history  or  politics.  But  of  history  he  was  in  fact  an 
assiduous  reader,  and  the  secret  of  his  indifference 
to  politics,  so  far  as  it  existed,  was  that  those  of  his 
own  time  had  to  men  of  his  years  and  way  of  thinking 
been    a   disillusion, — that   the   saving    of  the   world 

1  John  Keats  :    His  Life  and  Poetry,   His  Friends,   Critics,   and 
After-fame.    By  Sidney  Colvin.     Second  edition.     (Macmillan.) 

62 


The  Problem  of  Keats 

from  the  grip  of  one  great  overshadowing  tyranny 
had  but  ended  in  reinstating  a  number  of  ancient  and 
minor  tyrannies  less  interesting  but  not  less  tyrannical. 
To  that  which  lies  behind  and  above  politics  and  history 
to  the  general  destinies,  aspirations,  and  tribulations 
of  the  race,  he  was,  as  we  have  seen,  not  indifferent 
but  only  tragically  and  acutely  sensitive.' 

We  believe  that  both  the  positive  and  the  negative  of 
that  vindication  might  be  exemplified  among  chosen 
spirits  to-day,  living  or  untimely  dead;  but  we  desire, 
not  to  enlist  Sir  Sidney  in  a  cause,  but  only  to  make 
apparent  the  reason  why,  in  spite  of  minor  dissents 
and  inevitable  differences  of  estimation,  our  sympathy 
with  him  is  enduring.  It  may  be  that  we  have  chosen 
to  identify  ourselves  so  closely  with  Keats  that  we 
feel  to  Sir  Sidney  the  attachment  that  is  reserved  for 
the  staunch  friend  of  a  friend  who  is  dead;  but  we 
do  not  believe  that  this  is  so.  We  are  rather  attached 
by  the  sense  of  a  loyalty  that  exists  in  and  for  itself; 
more  intimate  repercussions  may  follow,  but  they  can 
follow  only  when  the  critical  honesty,  the  determina- 
tion to  let  Keats  be  valid  as  Keats,  whatever  it  might 
cost  (and  we  can  see  that  it  sometimes  costs  Sir  Sidney 
not  a  little),  has  impressed  itself  upon  us. 

It  is  rather  by  this  than  by  Sir  Sidney's  particular 
contributions  to  our  knowledge  of  the  poet  that  we 
judge  his  book.  This  assured,  we  accept  his  patient 
exposition  of  the  theme  of  'Endymion  *  with  a  friendly 
interest  that  would  certainly  not  be  given  to  one  with 
a  lesser  claim  upon  us;  and  in  this  spirit  we  can  also 
find  a  welcome  for  the  minute  investigation  of  the 
pictorial  and  plastic  material  of  Keats's  imagination. 

63 


Aspects  of  Literature 

Under  auspices  less  benign  we  might  have  found  the 
former  mistaken  and  the  latter  irrelevant;  but  it  so 
happens  that  when  Sir  Sidney  shows  us  over  the 
garden  every  goose  is  a  swan.  Like  travellers  who 
at  the  end  of  a  long  day's  journey  among  an  in- 
hospitable peasantry  are,  against  their  expectation, 
received  in  a  kindly  farm,  and  find  themselves  talking 
glibly  to  their  host  of  matters  which  are  unimportant 
and  unknown  to  them — the  price  of  land,  and  the 
points  of  a  pedigree  bull — so  we  follow  with  an 
mtense  and  intelligent  absorption  a  subtle  argument 
in  *  Endymion  '  in  which  at  no  moment  we  really 
believe.  On  the  contrary,  we  are  convinced  (when 
we  are  free  from  our  author's  friendly  spell)  that  Keats 
wrote  *  Endymion  '  at  all  adventure.  The  words  of 
the  cancelled  preface  :  *  Before  I  began  I  had  no 
inward  feel  of  being  able  to  finish;  and  as  I  proceeded 
my  steps  were  all  uncertain,'  were,  we  are  sure,  quite 
literally  true,  and  if  anything  an  under-statement  of 
his  lack  of  argument  and  plan.  Not  that  we  believe 
that  Keats  was  incapable  of  or  averse  to  *  fundamental 
brain-work  ' — he  had  an  understanding  more  robust, 
firmer  in  its  hold  of  reality,  more  closely  cast  upon 
experience,  than  any  one  of  his  great  contemporaries, 
Wordsworth  not  excepted — but  at  that  phase  in  his 
evolution  he  was  simply  not  concerned  with  under- 
standing. *  Endymion  '  is  not  a  record  or  sublima- 
tion of  experience;  it  is  itself  an  experience.  It  was 
the  liberation  of  a  verbal  inhibition,  and  the  magic 
word  of  freedom  was  Beauty.  The  story  of  Endymion 
was  to  Keats  a  road  to  the  unknown,  in  her  course 
along  which  his  imagination  might  *  paw  up  against 
the  sky.' 

64 


The  Problem  of  Keats 

A  refusal  to  admit  that  Keats  built  *  Endymion  ' 
upon  any  structure  of  argument,  however  obscure — 
even  Sir  Sidney  would  acknowledge  that  the  argument 
he  discovers  is  very  obscure — is  so  far  from  being  a 
derogation  from  his  genius  that  it  is  in  our  opinion 
necessary  to  a  full  appreciation  of  his  idiosyncrasy. 
It  is  customary  to  regard  the  Odes  as  the  pinnacle 
of  his  achievement  and  to  trace  a  poetical  progression 
to  that  point  and  a  subsequent  decline:  we  are  shown 
the  evidence  of  this  decline  in  the  revised  Induction 
to  *  Hyperion.'  As  far  as  an  absolute  poetical  per- 
fection is  concerned  there  can  be  no  serious  objection 
to  the  view.  But  the  case  of  Keats  is  eminently  one 
to  be  considered  in  itself  as  well  as  objectively.  There 
is  no  danger  that  Keats's  poetry  will  not  be  appreciated; 
the  danger  is  that  Keats  may  not  be  understood.  And 
precisely  this  moment  is  opportune  for  understanding 
him.  As  Mr  T.  S.  Eliot  has  lately  pointed  out,  the 
development  of  English  poetry  since  the  early  nine- 
teenth century  was  largely  based  on  the  achievement 
of  two  poets  of  genius,  Keats  and  Shelley,  who  never 
reached  maturity.  They  were  made  gods ;  and  rightly, 
had  not  poets  themselves  bowed  down  to  them.  That 
was  ridiculous;  there  is  something  even  pitiful  in 
the  spectacle  of  Rossetti  and  Morris  finding  the 
culmination  of  poetry,  the  one  in  *  The  Eve  of  St 
Agnes,*  the  other  in  *  La  Belle  Dame  sans  Merci.* 
And  this  undiscriminating  submission  of  a  century 
to  the  influence  of  hypostatised  phases  in  the  develop- 
ment of  a  poet  of  sanity  and  genius  is  perhaps  the 
chief  of  the  causes  of  the  half-conscious,  and  for  the 
most  part  far  less  discriminating,  spirit  of  revolt 
which  is  at  work  in  modern  poetry. 

65 


Aspects  of  Literature 

A  sense  is  abroad  that  the  tradition  has  somehow 
been  snapped,  that  what  has  been  accepted  as  the 
tradition  unquestioningly  for  a  hundred  years  is  only 
a  cul  de  sac.  Somewhere  there  has  been  a  substitution. 
In  the  resulting  chaos  the  twittering  of  bats  is  taken 
for  poetry,  and  the  critically  minded  have  the  grim 
amusement  of  watching  verse-writers  gain  eminence 
by  imitating  Coventry  Patmore!  The  bolder  spirits 
declare  that  there  never  was  such  a  thing  as  a  tradition, 
that  it  is  no  use  learning,  because  there  is  nothing  to 
learn.  But  they  are  a  little  nervous  for  all  their  bold- 
ness, and  they  prefer  to  hunt  in  packs,  of  which  the 
only  condition  of  membership  is  that  no  one  should 
ask  what  it  is. 

At  such  a  juncture,  if  indeed  not  at  all  times,  it 
is  of  no  less  importance  to  understand  Keats  than  to 
appreciate  his  poetry.  The  culmination  of  the 
achievement  of  the  Keats  to  be  understood  is  not  the 
Odes,  perfect  as  they  are,  nor  the  tales — a  heresy 
even  for  objective  criticism — nor  *  Hyperion  *;  but 
precisely  that  revised  Induction  to  *  Hyperion  '  which 
on  the  other  argument  is  held  to  indicate  how  the 
poet's  powers  had  been  ravaged  by  disease  and  the 
pangs  of  unsatisfied  love.  On  the  technical  side 
alone  the  Induction  is  of  extraordinary  interest. 
Keats*s  natural  and  proper  revulsion  from  the  Miltonic 
style,  the  deliberate  art  of  which  he  had  handled  like 
an  almost  master,  is  evident  but  incomplete;  he  is 
hampered  by  the  knowledge  that  the  virus  is  in  his 
blood.  The  creative  effort  of  the  Induction  was 
infinitely  greater  than  is  immediately  apparent.  Keats 
is  engaged  in  a  war  on  two  fronts  :  he  is  struggling 
against  the  Miltonic  manner,  and  struggling  also  to 


The  Problem  of  Keats 

deal  with  an  unfamiliar  content.  The  whole  direction 
of  his  poetic  purpose  had  shifted  since  he  wrote 
*  Hyperion.'  *  Hyperion/  though  far  finer  as  art, 
had  been  produced  by  an  impulse  substantially  the 
same  as  *  Endymion  *;  it  was  an  exercise  in  a  manner. 
Keats  desired  to  prove  to  himself,  and  perhaps  a 
little  at  that  moment  to  prove  to  the  world,  that  he 
was  capable  of  Miltonic  discipline  and  grandeur.  It 
was,  most  strictly,  necessary  for  him  to  be  inwardly 
certain  of  this.  He  had  drunk,  as  deeply  as  any  of 
his  contemporaries,  of  the  tradition;  he  needed  to 
know  that  he  had  assimilated  what  he  had  drunk,  that 
he  could  employ  a  conscious  art  as  naturally  as  the 
most  deliberate  artist  of  the  past,  and,  most  of  all, 
that  he  would  begin,  when  he  did  begin,  at  the  point 
where  his  forerunners  left  off,  and  not  at  a  point 
behind  them.  These  necessities  were  not  present  in 
this  form  to  Keats's  mind  when  he  began  '  Hyperion  *; 
most  probably  he  began  merely  with  the  idea  of 
holding  his  own  with  Milton,  and  with  a  delight  in  an 
apt  and  congenial  theme.  Keats  was  not  a  poet  of 
definite  and  deliberate  plans,  which  indeed  are  incident 
to  a  certain  tenuity  of  soul ;  his  decisions  wef e  taken 
not  by  the  intellect,  but  by  the  being. 

He  dropped  *  Hyperion  '  because  it  was  inadequate 
to  the  whole  of  him.  He  was  weary  of  its  deliberate 
art  because  it  interposed  a  veil  between  him  and  that 
which  he  needed  to  express;  it  was  an  imposition 
upon  himself. 

*  I  have  given  up  "  Hyperion  " — there  were  too 
many  Miltonic  inversions  in  it — Miltonic  verse  cannot 
be  written  but  in  an  artful,  or  rather  artist's,  humour. 

67 


Aspects  of  Literature 

I  wish  to  give  myself  up  to  other  sensations.  English 
ought  to  be  kept  up.  It  may  be  interesting  to  you 
to  pick  out  some  lines  from  "  Hyperion  ''  and  put 
a  mark  +  to  the  false  beauty  proceeding  from  art, 
and  one  ||  to  the  true  voice  of  feeling.  .  .  .* — (Letter 
to  J.  H.  Reynolds,  Sept.  22,  1819.) 

That  outwardly  negative  reaction  is  packed  with 
positive  implications.  *  English  ought  to  be  kept  up  ' 
meant,  on  Keats*s  lips,  a  very  great  deal.  But  there 
is  other  and  more  definite  authority  for  the  positive 
direction  in  which  he  was  turning.  To  his  brother 
George  he  wrote,  at  the  same  time: — 

*  I  have  but  lately  stood  on  my  guard  against 
Milton.  Life  to  him  would  be  death  to  me.  Miltonic 
verse  cannot  be  written,  but  is  the  verse  of  art.  I 
wish  to  devote  myself  to  another  verse  alone.* 

More  definite  still  is  the  letter  of  November  17,  18 19, 
to  his  friend  and  publisher,  John  Taylor: — 

*  I  have  come  to  a  determination  not  to  publish 
anything  I  have  now  ready  written;  but  for  all  that 
to  publish  a  poem  before  long  and  that  I  hope  to 
make  a  fine  one.  As  the  marvellous  is  the  most 
enticing  and  the  surest  guarantee  of  harmonious 
numbers  I  have  been  endeavouring  to  persuade  myself 
to  untether  fancy  and  to  let  her  manage  for  herself.  I 
and  myself  cannot  agree  about  this  at  all.  Wonders 
are  no  wonders  to  me.  I  am  more  at  home  amongst 
Men  and  Women.  I  would  rather  read  Chaucer 
than  Ariosto.  The  little  dramatic  skill  I  may  as  yet 
68 


The  Problem  of  Keats 

have,  however  badly  it  might  show  in  a  Drama, 
would,  I  think,  be  sufficient  for  a  Poem.  I  wish  to 
diffuse  the  colouring  of  St  Agnes  Eve  throughout  a 
poem  in  which  Character  and  Sentiment  would  be 
the  figures  to  such  drapery.  Two  or  three  such 
poems,  if  God  should  spare  me,  written  in  the  course 
of  the  next  six  years  would  be  a  famous  gradus  ad 
Parnassum  altissimum.  I  mean  they  would  nerve 
me  up  to  the  writing  of  a  few  fine  plays — my  greatest 
ambition — when  I  do  feel  ambitious.  .  .  .* 

No  letter  could  be  saner,  nor  more  indicative  of  calm 
resolve.  Yet  the  precise  determination  is  that  nothing 
that  went  to  make  the  1820  volume  should  be  pub- 
lished, neither  Odes,  nor  Tales,  nor  *  Hyperion.* 
This  is  that  mood  of  Keats  which  Sir  Sidney  Colvin,  in 
his  comment  upon  a  passage  in  the  revised  Induction, 
calls  one  of  *  fierce  injustice  to  his  own  achievements 
and  their  value.'  But  a  poet,  if  he  is  a  real  one,  judges 
his  own  achievements  not  by  those  of  his  contem- 
poraries, but  by  the  standard  of  his  own  intention. 

The  evidence  that  Keats's  mind  had  passed  beyond 
the  stage  at  which  it  could  be  satisfied  by  the  poems 
of  the  1820  volume  is  overwhelming.  His  letters  to 
George  of  April,  18 19,  show  that  he  was  naturally 
evolving  towards  an  attitude,  a  philosophy,  more 
profound  and  comprehensive  than  could  be  expressed 
adequately  in  such  records  of  momentary  aspiration 
and  emotion  as  the  Odes;  though  the  keen  and  sudden 
poignancy  that  had  invaded  them  belongs  to  the  new 
Keats.  They  mark  the  transition  to  the  new  poetry 
which  he  vaguely  discerned.  The  problem  was  to 
find   the   method.      The  letters   we   have   quoted   to 

69 


Aspects  of  Literature 

show  his  reaction  from  the  Miltonic  influence  display 
the  more  narrowly  '  artistic  *  aspect  of  the  same 
evolution.  A  technique  more  responsive  to  the  felt 
reality  of  experience  must  be  found — *  English  ought 
to  be  kept  up  * — the  apparatus  of  Romantic  story 
must  be  abandoned — *  Wonders  are  no  wonders  to 
me  * — ^yet  the  Romantic  colour  must  be  kept  to  restore 
to  a  realistic  psychology  the  vividness  and  richly 
various  quality  that  are  too  often  lost  by  analysis. 
We  do  not  believe  that  we  have  in  any  respect  forced 
the  interpretation  of  the  letters;  the  terminology  of 
that  age  needs  to  be  translated  to  be  understood. 
*  Men  and  Women  .  .  .  Characters  and  Sentiments  ' 
are  called,  for  better  or  worse,  *  psychology  '  nowadays. 
And  our  translation  has  this  merit,  that  some  of  our 
ultra-moderns  will  listen  to  the  word  *  psychology,* 
where  they  would  be  bat-blind  to  *  Characters  '  and 
stone-deaf  to  *  Sentiments.* 

Modern  poetry  is  still  faced  with  the  same 
problem ;  but  very  few  of  its  adepts  have  reached  so 
far  as  to  be  able  to  formulate  it  even  with  the  precision 
of  Keats's  scattered  allusions.  Keats  himself  was 
struck  down  at  the  moment  when  he  was  striving 
(against  disease  and  against  a  devouring,  hopeless 
love-passion)  to  face  it  squarely.  The  revised  Induc- 
tion reveals  him  in  the  effort  to  shape  the  traditional 
(and  perhaps  still  necessary)  apparatus  of  myth  to  an 
instrument  of  his  attitude.  The  meaning  of  the 
Induction  is  not  difficult  to  discover;  but  current 
criticism  has  the  habit  of  regarding  it  dubiously. 
Therefore  we  may  be  forgiven  for  attempting,  with 
the  brevity  imposed  upon  us,  to  make  its  elements 
clear.  The  first  eighteen  lines,  which  Sir  Sidney 
70 


The  Problem  of  Keats 

Colvin  on  objective  grounds  regrets  are,  we  think, 
vital. 

*  Fanatics  have  their  dreams,  wherewith  they 

weave 
A  paradise  for  a  sect;  the  savage,  too. 
From  forth  the  loftiest  fashion  of  his  sleep 
Guesses  at  heaven;   pity  these  have  not 
Trac'd  upon  vellum  or  wild  Indian  leaf 
The  shadows  of  melodious  utterance. 
But  bare  of  laurel  they  live,  dream,  and  die ; 
For  poesy  alone  can  tell  her  dreams, — 
With  the  fine  spell  of  words  alone  can  save 
Imagination  from  the  sable  chain 
And  dumb  enchantment.    Who  alive  can  say, 
*  Thou  art  no  poet — mays^t  not  tell  thy  dreams  *  } 
Since  every  man  whose  soul  is  not  a  clod 
Hath  visions  and  would  speak,  if  he  had  loved. 
And  been  well-nurtured  in  his  mother-tongue. 
Whether  the  dream  now  purposed  to  rehearse  ' 
Be  poet's  or  fanatic's  will  be  known 
When  this  warm  scribe,  my  hand,  is  in  the 

grave.' 

We  may  admit  that  the  form  of  these  lines  is 
unfortunate;  but  we  cannot  wish  them  away.  They 
bear  most  closely  upon  the  innermost  argument  of 
the  poem  as  Keats  endeavoured  to  reshape  it.  All 
men,  says  Keats,  have  their  visions  of  reality;  but 
the  poet  alone  can  express  his,  and  the  poet  himself 
may  at  the  last  prove  to  have  been  a  fanatic,  one  who 
has  imagined  *  a  paradise  for  a  sect '  instead  of  a 
heaven  for  all  humanity. 

A.L.  F  71 


Aspects  of  Literature 

This  discovery  marks  the  point  of  crisis  in  Keats's 
development.  He  is  no  longer  content  to  be  the 
singer;  his  poetry  must  be  adequate  to  all  experience. 
No  wonder  then  that  the  whole  of  the  new  Induction 
centres  about  this  thought.  He  describes  his  effort 
to  fight  against  an  invading  death  and  to  reach  the 
altar  in  the  mighty  dream  palace.  As  his  foot  touches 
the  altar-step  life  returns,  and  the  prophetic  voice  of 
the  veiled  goddess  reveals  to  him  that  he  has  been 
saved  by  his  power  '  to  die  and  live  again  before  Thy 
fated  hour.* 

*  "  None  can  usurp  this  height,**  return'd  that 

shade. 
"  But  those  to  whom  the  miseries  of  the  world 
Are  misery  and  will  not  let  them  rest. 
All  else  who  find  a  haven  in  the  world 
Where  they  may  thoughtless  sleep  away  their 

days, 
If  by  a  chance  into  this  fane  they  come, 
Rot   on    the    pavement    where    thou    rottedst 

half.** ' 

Because  he  has  been  mindful  of  the  pain  in  the  world, 
the  poet  has  been  saved.  But  the  true  lovers  of 
humanity, — 

*  Who  love  their  fellows  even  to  the  death, 
Who  feel  the  giant  agony  of  the  world,* 

are  greater  than  the  poets;  *  they  are  no  dreamers 
weak.' 

72 


The  Problem  of  Keats 

*  They  come  not  here,  they  have  no  thought  to 
come, 
And  thou  art  here  for  thou  are  less  than  they.* 

It  is  a  higher  thing  to  mitigate  the  pain  of  the  world 
than  to  brood  upon  the  problem  of  it.  And  not  only 
the  lover  of  mankind,  but  man  the  animal  is  pre- 
eminent above  the  poet-dreamer.  His  joy  is  joy; 
his  pain,  pain.  *  Only  the  dreamer  venoms  all  his 
days.*  Yet  the  poet  has  his  reward;  it  is  given  to 
him  to  partake  of  the  vision  of  the  veiled  Goddess — 
memory,  Moneta,  Mnemosyne,  the  spirit  of  the 
eternal  reality  made  visible. 

*  Then  saw  I  a  wan  face 
Not   pined   by  human   sorrows,   but   bright- 

blanch*d 
By  an  immortal  sickness  which  kills  not; 
It  works  a  constant  change,  which  happy  death 
Can  put  no  end  to;  death  wards  progressing 
To  no  death  was  that  visage;   it  had  past 
The  lily  and  the  snow;   and  beyond  these 
I  must  not  think  now,  though  I  saw  that  face. 
But  for  her  eyes  I  should  have  fled  away; 
They  held  me  back  with  a  benignant  light 
Soft,  mitigated  by  divinest  lids 
Half-closed,  and  visionless  entire  they  seemed 
Of  all  external  things ;   they  saw  me  not. 
But  in  blank  splendour  beamed  like  the  mild 

moon 
Who  comforts  those  she  sees  not,  who  knows 

not 
What  eyes  are  upward  cast.  .  .  .* 

73 


Aspects  of  Literature 

This  vision  of  Moneta  is  the  culminating  point  of 
Keats*s  evolution.  It  stands  at  the  summit,  not  of  his 
poetry,  but  of  his  achievement  regarded  as  obedient 
to  its  own  inward  law.  Moneta  was  to  him  the  dis- 
covered spirit  of  reality ;  her  vision  was  the  vision  of 
necessity  itself.  In  her,  joy  and  pain,  life  and  death, 
compassion  and  indifference,  vision  and  blindness  are 
one;  she  is  the  eternal  abode  of  contraries,  the  Idea, 
if  you  will,  not  hypostatised  but  immanent.  Before 
this  reality  the  poet  is  impotent  as  his  fellows;  he  is 
above  them  by  his  knowledge  of  it,  but  below  them 
by  the  weakness  which  that  knowledge  brings.  He, 
too,  is  the  prey  of  contraries,  the  mirror  of  his  deity, 
struck  to  the  heart  of  his  victory,  enduring  the 
intolerable  pain  of  triumph. 

Here,  not  unfittingly,  in  his  struggle  with  a 
conception  too  big  to  express,  came  the  end  of  Keats 
the  poet.  None  have  passed  beyond  him;  few  have 
been  so  far.  Of  the  poetry  that  might  have  been 
constructed  on  the  basis  of  an  apprehension  so  pro- 
found we  can  form  only  a  conjecture,  each  after  his 
own  image  :  we  do  not  know  the  method  of  the 
*  other  verse  '  of  which  Keats  had  a  glimpse ;  we  only 
know  the  quality  with  which  it  would  have  been 
saturated,  the  calm  and  various  light  of  united 
contraries. 

We  fear  that  Sir  Sidney  Colvin  will  not  agree  with 
our  view.  The  angles  of  observation  are  different. 
The  angle  at  which  we  have  placed  ourselves  is  not 
wholly  advantageous — from  it  Sir  Sidney's  book 
could  not  have  been  written — but  it  has  this  advantage, 
that  from  it  we  can  read  his  book  with  a  heightened 
interest.     As  we  look  out  from  it,  some  things  are 

74 


The  Problem  of  Keats 

increased  and  some  diminished  with  the  change  of 
perspective;  and  among  those  which  are  increased  is 
our  gratitude  to  Sir  Sidney.  In  the  clear  mirror  of 
his  sympathy  and  sanity  nothing  is  obscured.  We 
are  shown  the  Keats  who  wrote  the  perfect  poems 
that  will  last  with  the  English  language,  and  in  the 
few  places  where  Sir  Sidney  falls  short  of  the  spirit 
of  complete  acceptance,  we  discern  behind  the  words 
of  rebuke  and  regret  only  the  idealisation  of  a  love 
which  we  are  proud  to  share.  [july,  191 9. 


75 


Thoughts  on  Tchehov 

We  do  not  know  if  the  stories  collected  in  this 
volume^  stand  together  in  the  Russian  edition  of 
Tchehov's  works,  or  if  the  selection  is  due  to  Mrs 
Constance  Garnett.  It  is  also  possible  that  the  juxta- 
position is  fortuitous.  But  the  stories  are  united  by 
a  similarity  of  material.  Whereas  in  the  former 
volumes  of  this  admirable  series  Tchehov  is  shown 
as  preoccupied  chiefly  with  the  life  of  the 
intelligentsia^  here  he  finds  his  subjects  in  priests 
and  peasants,  or  (in  the  story  Uprooted)  in  the  half- 
educated. 

Such  a  distinction  is,  indeed,  irrelevant.  As 
Tchehov  presents  them  to  our  minds,  the  life  of  the 
country  and  the  life  of  the  town  produce  the  same 
final  impression,  arouse  in  us  an  awareness  of  an 
identical  quality;  and  thus,  the  distinction,  by  its 
very  irrelevance,  points  us  the  more  quickly  to  what 
is  essential  in  Tchehov.  It  is  that  his  attitude,  to 
which  he  persuades  us,  is  complete,  not  partial.  His 
comprehension  radiates  from  a  steady  centre,  and  is 
not  capriciously  kindled  by  a  thousand  accidental 
contacts.  In  other  words,  Tchehov  is  not  what  he 
^s  so  often  assumed  to  be,  an  impressionist.  Con- 
sciously or  unconsciously  he  had  taken  the  step — the 
veritable  salto  mortale — by  which  the  great  literary 
artist  moves  out  of  the  ranks  of  the  minor  writers. 
He  had  slowly  shifted  his  angle  of  vision  until  he 

*  The  Bishop  ;  and  Other  Stories.    By  Anton  Tchehov.    Translated 
by  Constance  Garnett.     (Chatto  &  Windus.) 

76 


Thoughts  OTi  Tchehov 

could  discern  a  unity  in  multiplicity.     Unity  of  this^ 
rare  kind  cannot  be  imposed  as,  for  instance,  Zola 
attempted  to  impose  it.     It  is  an  emanation  from  life 
which  can  be  distinguished  only  by  the  most  sensitive 
contemplation. 

The  problem  is  to  define  this  unity  in  the  case 
of  each  great  writer  in  whom  it  appears.  To  appre- 
hend it  is  not  so  difficult.  The  mere  sense  of  unity 
is  so  singular  and  compelling  that  it  leaves  room  for 
few  hesitations.  The  majority  of  writers,  however 
excellent  in  their  peculiar  virtues,  are  not  concerned 
with  it:  at  one  moment  they  represent,  at  another 
they  may  philosophise,  but  the  two  activities  have  no 
organic  connection,  and  their  work,  if  it  displays  any 
evolution  at  all,  displays  it  only  in  the  minor  accidents 
of  the  craft,  such  as  style  in  the  narrower  and  technical 
sense,  or  the  obvious  economy  of  construction.  There 
is  no  danger  of  mistaking  these  for  great  writers.  Nor, 
in  the  more  peculiar  case  of  writers  who  attempt  to 
impose  the  illusion  of  unity,  is  the  danger  serious. 
The  apparatus  is  always  visible;  they  cannot  afford 
to  do  without  the  paraphernalia  of  argument  which 
supplies  the  place  of  what  is  lacking  in  their  presen- 
tation. The  obvious  instance  of  this  legerdemain  is 
Zola;  a  less  obvious,  and  therefore  more  interesting 
example  is  Balzac. 

To  attempt  the  more  difficult  problem.  What  is 
most  peculiar  to  Tchehov's  unity  is  that  it  is  far  more 
nakedly  aesthetic  than  that  of  most  of  the  great  writers 
before  him.  Other  writers  of  a  rank  equal  to  his — 
and  there  are  not  so  very  many — have  felt  the  need 
to  shift  their  angle  of  vision  until  they  could  perceive 
an  all-embracing  unity;    but  they  were  not  satisfied 

77 


Aspects  of  Literature 

with  this.  They  felt,  and  obeyed,  the  further  need 
of  taking  an  attitude  towards  the  unity  they  saw. 
They  approved  or  disapproved,  accepted  or  rejected 
it.  It  would  be  perhaps  more  accurate  to  say  that 
they  gave  or  refused  their  endorsement.  They 
appealed  to  some  other  element  than  their  own  sense 
of  beauty  for  the  final  verdict  on  their  discovery; 
they  asked  whether  it  was  just  or  good. 

The  distinguishing  mark  of  Tchehov  is  that  he  is 
satisfied  with  the  unity  he  discovers.  Its  uniqueness  is 
sufficient  for  him.  It  does  not  occur  to  him  to  demand 
that  it  should  be  otherwise  or  better.  The  act  of 
comprehension  is  accompanied  by  an  instantaneous 
act  of  acceptance.  He  is  like  a  man  who  contemplates 
a  perfect  work  of  art;  but  the  work  of  creation  has 
been  his,  and  has  consisted  in  the  gradual  adjustment 
of  his  vision  until  he  could  see  the  frustration  of 
human  destinies  and  the  arbitrary  infliction  of  pain 
as  processes  no  less  inevitable,  natural,  and  beautiful 
than  the  flowering  of  a  plant.  Not  that  Tchehov  is 
a  greater  artist  than  any  of  his  great  predecessors;  he 
is  merely  more  wholly  an  artist,  which  is  a  very  different 
thing.  There  is  in  him  less  admixture  of  preoccupations 
that  are  not  purely  aesthetic,  and  probably  for  this 
reason  he  has  less  creative  vigour  than  any  other 
artist  of  equal  rank.  It  seems  as  though  artists,  like 
cattle  and  fruit  trees,  need  a  good  deal  of  crossing 
with  substantial  foreign  elements,  in  order  to  be  very 
vigorous  and  very  fruitful.  Tchehov  has  the  virtues 
and  the  shortcomings  of  the  pure  case. 

I  do  not  wish  to  be  understood  as  saying  that 
Tchehov  is  a  manifestation  o{  V art  pour  V art^  because 
in  any  commonly  accepted  sense  of  that  phrase,  he 

78 


Thoughts  07t   Tchehov 

is  not.  Still,  he  might  be  considered  as  an  exempli- 
fication of  what  the  phrase  might  be  made  to  mean. 
But  instead  of  being  diverted  into  a  barren  dispute 
over  terminologies,  one  may  endeavour  to  bring  into 
prominence  an  aspect  of  Tchehov  which  has  an 
immediate  interest — his  modernity.  Again,  the  word 
is  awkward.  It  suggests  that  he  is  fashionable,  or 
up  to  date.  Tchehov  is,  in  fact,  a  good  many  phases 
in  advance  of  all  that  is  habitually  described  as  modern 
in  the  art  of  literature.  The  artistic  problem  which  he 
faced  and  solved  is  one  that  is,  at  most,  partially 
present  to  the  consciousness  of  the  modern  writer — 
to  reconcile  the  greatest  possible  'diversity  of  content 
with  the  greatest  possible  unity  of  aesthetic  impression. 
Diversity  of  content  we  are  beginning  to  find  in 
profusion — Miss  May  Sinclair's  latest  experiment 
shows  how  this  need  is  beginning  to  trouble  a  writer 
with  a  settled  manner  and  a  fixed  reputation — but  how 
rarely  do  we  see  even  a  glimmering  recognition  of  the 
necessity  of  a  unified  aesthetic  impression!  The 
modern  method  is  to  assume  that  all  that  is,  or  has 
been,  present  to  consciousness  is  i-pso  facto  unified 
aesthetically.  The  result  of  such  an  assumption  is  an 
obvious  disintegration  both  of  language  and  artistic 
effort,  a  mere  retrogression  from  the  classical  method. 
The  classical  method  consisted,  essentially,  in. 
achieving  aesthetic  unity  by  a  process  of  rigorous 
exclusion  of  all  that  was  not  germane  to  an  arbitrary 
(because  non-aesthetic)  argument.  This  argument 
was  let  down  like  a  string  into  the  saturated  solution 
of  the  consciousness  until  a  unified  crystalline  structure 
congregated  about  it.  Of  all  great  artists  of  the  past 
Shakespeare  is  the  richest  in  his  departures  from  this 

79 


Aspects  of  Literature 

method.  How  much  deliberate  artistic  purpose  there 
was  in  his  employment  of  songs  and  madmen  and 
fools  (an  employment  fundamentally  different  from 
that  made  by  his  contemporaries)  is  a  subject  far  too 
big  for  a  parenthesis.  But  he,  too,  is  at  bottom  a 
classic  artist.  The  modern  problem — it  has  not  yet 
been  sufficiently  solved  for  us  to  speak  of  a  modern 
method — arises  from  a  sense  that  the  classical  method 
produces  over-simplification.  It  does  not  permit  of  a 
sufficient  sense  of  multiplicity.  One  can  think  of  a 
dozen  semi-treatments  of-  the  problem  from  Balzac 
to  Dostoevsky,  but  they  were  all  on  the  old  lines. 
They  might  be  called  Shakespearean  modifications  of 
the  classical  method. 

Tchehov,  we  believe,  attempted  a  treatment  radi- 
cally new.  To  make  use  again  of  our  former  image 
in  his  maturer  writing,  he  chose  a  different  string  to 
let  down  into  the  saturated  solution  of  consciousness. 
In  a  sense  he  began  at  the  other  end.  He  had  decided 
on  the"  quality  of  aesthetic  impression  he  wished  to 
produce,  not  by  an  arbitrary  decision,  but  by  one 
which  followed  naturally  from  the  contemplative 
unity  of  life  which  he  had  achieved.  The  essential 
quality  he  discerned  and  desired  to  represent  was  his 
argument,  his  string.  Everything  that  heightened 
and  completed  this  quality  accumulated  about  it, 
quite  independently  of  whether  it  would  have  been 
repelled  by  the  old  criterion  of  plot  and  argument. 
There  is  a  magnificent  example  of  his  method  in  the 
longest  story  in  this  volume,  *  The  Steppe.*  The 
quality  is  dominant  throughout,  and  by  some  strange 
compulsion  it  makes  heterogeneous  things  one;  it 
is  reinforced  by  the  incident.  Tiny  events — the 
80 


Thoughts  on  Tchehov 

peasant  who  eats  minnows  alive,  the  Jewish  inn- 
keeper's brother  who  burned  his  six  thousand  roubles 
— take  on  a  character  of  portent,  except  that  the  word 
is  too  harsh  for  so  delicate  a  distortion  of  normal 
vision ;  rather  it  is  a  sense  of  incalculability  that  haunts 
us.  The  emphases  have  all  been  slightly  shifted, 
but  shifted  according  to  a  valid  scheme.  It  is  not 
while  we  are  reading,  but  afterwards  that  we  wonder 
how  so  much  significance  could  attach  to  a  little 
boy's  questions  in  a  remote  village  shop: — 

*  "  How  much  are  these  cakes  }  ' 

*  "  Two  for  a  farthing.' 

*  Yegorushka  took  out  of  his  pocket  the  cake 
given  him  the  day  before  by  the  Jewess  and  asked 
him: — 

*  "  And  how  much  do  you  charge  for  cakes  like 
this  .?  ' 

*  The  shopman  took  the  cake  in  his  hands,  looked 
at  it  from  all  sides,  and  raised  one  eyebrow. 

*  "  Like  that  ? '  he  asked. 

*  Then  he  raised  the  other  eyebrow,  thought  a 
minute,  and  answered: — 

*  "  Two  for  three  farthings.  .  .   .'" 

It  is  foolish  to  quote  it.  It  is  like  a  golden  pebble 
from  the  bed  of  a  stream.  The  stream  that  flows 
over  Tchehov's  innumerable  pebbles,  infinitely  diverse 
and  heterogeneous,  is  the  stream  of  a  deliberately 
sublimated  quality.  The  figure  is  inexact,  as  figures 
are.  Not  every  pebble  could  be  thus  transmuted. 
But  how  they  are  chosen,  what  is  the  real  nature  of 
the  relation  which  unites  them,  as  we  feel  it  does,  is 

8i 


Aspects  of  Literature 

a  secret  which  modern  English  writers  need  to  explore. 
Till  they  have  explored  and  mastered  it  Tchehov  will 
remain  a  master  in  advance  of  them.      [august,  i  9  i  9. 


The  case  of  Tchehov  is  one  to  be  investigated  again 
and  again  because  he  is  the  only  great  modern  artist 
in  prose.  Tolstoy  was  living  throughout  Tchehov's 
life,  as  Hardy  has  lived  throughout  our  own,  and 
these  are  great  among  the  greatest.  But  they  are 
not  modern.  It  is  an  essential  part  of  their  greatness 
that  they  could  not  be;  they  have  a  simplicity  and 
scope  that  manifestly  belongs  to  all  time  rather  than 
to  this.  Tchehov  looked  towards  Tolstoy  as  we  to 
Hardy.  He  saw  in  him  a  Colossus,  one  whose 
achievement  was  of  another  and  a  greater  kind  than 
his  own. 

*  I  am  afraid  of  Tolstoy's  death.  If  he  were  to 
die  there  would  be  a  big  empty  place  in  my  life.  To 
begin  with,  because  I  have  never  loved  any  man  as 
much  as  him.  .  .  .  Secondly,  while  Tolstoy  is  in 
literature  it  is  easy  and  pleasant  to  be  a  literary  man; 
even  recognising  that  one  has  done  nothing  and 
never  will  do  anything  is  not  so  dreadful,  since  Tolstoy 
will  do  enough  for  all.  His  work  is  the  justification 
of  the  enthusiasms  and  expectations  built  upon 
literature.  Thirdly,  Tolstoy  takes  a  firm  stand;  he 
has  an  immense  authority,  and  so  long  as  he  is  alive, 
bad  tastes  in  literature,  vulgarity  of  every  kind,  insolent 
and  lachrymose,  all  the  bristling,  exasperated  vanities 
will  be  in  the  far  background,  in  the  shade.  .  .  .* — 
(January,  1900.) 
82 


Thoughts  on  Tchehov 

Tchehov  was  aware  of  the  gulf  that  separated  him 
from  the  great  men  before  him,  and  he  knew  that  it 
yawned  so  deep  that  it  could  not  be  crossed.  He 
belonged  to  a  new  generation,  and  he  alone  perhaps 
was  fully  conscious  of  it.  *  We  are  lemonade,'  he 
wrote  in  1892. 

*  Tell  me  honestly  who  of  my  contemporaries — 
that  is,  men  between  thirty  and  forty-five — have  given 
the  world  one  single  drop  of  alcohol  ?  .  .  .  Science 
and  technical  knowledge  are  passing  through  a  great 
period  now,  but  for  our  sort  it  is  a  flabby,  stale,  dull 
time.  .  .  .  The  causes  of  this  are  not  to  be  found 
in  our  stupidity,  our  lack  of  talent,  or  our  insolence, 
but  in  a  disease  which  for  the  artist  is  worse  than 
syphilis  or  sexual  exhaustion.  We  lack  "something,'* 
that  is  true,  and  that  means  that,  lift  the  robe  of  our 
muse,  and  you  will  find  within  an  empty  void.  Let 
me  remind  you  that  the  writers  who  we  say  are  for 
all  time  or  are  simply  good,  and  who  intoxicate  us, 
have  one  common  and  very  important  characteristic; 
they  are  going  towards  something  and  are  summoning 
you  towards  it,  too,  and  you  feel,  not  with  your  mind 
but  with  your  whole  being,  that  they  have  some  object, 
just  like  the  ghost  of  Hamlet's  father,  who  did  not 
come  and  disturb  the  imagination  for  nothing.  .  .  . 
And  we  ?  We!  We  paint  life  as  it  is,  but  beyond 
that — nothing  at  all.  .  .  .  Flog  us  and  we  can  do 
more!  We  have  neither  immediate  nor  remote  aims, 
and  in  our  soul  there  is  a  great  empty  space.  We 
have  no  politics,  we  do  not  believe  in  revolution,  we 
have  no  God,  we  are  not  afraid  of  ghosts,  and  I 
personally  am  not  afraid  even  of  death  and  blindness. 

83 


Aspects  of  Literature 

One  who  wants  nothing,  hopes  for  nothing,  and  fears 
nothing  cannot  be  an  artist.  .  .   . 

*.  .  .  You  think  I  am  clever.  Yes,  I  am  at  least 
so  far  clever  as  not  to  conceal  from  myself  my  disease 
and  not  to  deceive  myself,  and  not  to  cover  up  my 
own  emptiness  with  other  people's  rags,  such  as  the 
ideas  of  the  'sixties  and  so  on.' 

That  was  written  in  1 892.  When  we  remember  all 
the  strange  literary  effort  gathered  round  about  that 
year  in  the  West — Symbolism,  the  Yellow  Book^  Art 
for  Art's  sake — and  the  limbo  into  which  it  has  been 
thrust  by  now,  we  may  realise  how  great  a  precursor, 
and,  in  his  own  despite,  a  leader,  Anton  Tchehov 
'was.  When  Western  literature  was  plunging  with 
enthusiasm  into  one  cul  de  sac  after  another,  incapable 
of  diagnosing  its  own  disease,  Tchehov  in  Russia, 
unknown  to  the  West,  had  achieved  a  clear  vision  and 
a  sense  of  perspective. 

To-day  we  begin  to  feel  how  intimately  Tchehov 
belongs  to  us;  to-morrow  we  may  feel  how  infinitely 
he  is  still  in  advance  of  us.  A  genius  will  always  be 
in  advance  of  a  talent,  and  in  so  far  as  we  are  con- 
cerned with  the  genius  of  Tchehov  we  must  accept 
the  inevitable.  We  must  analyse  and  seek  to  under- 
stand it;  we  must,  above  all,  make  up  our  minds  that 
since  Tchehov  has  written  and  his  writings  have  been 
made  accessible  to  us,  a  vast  amount  of  our  modern 
literary  production  is  simply  unpardonable.  Writers 
who  would  be  modern  and  ignore  Tchehov's  achieve- 
ment are,  however  much  they  may  persuade  themselves 
that  they  are  devoted  artists,  merely  engaged  in  satisfy- 
ing their  vanity  or  in  the  exercise  of  a  profession  like 

84 


Thoughts  on  Tchehov 

any  other ;  for  Tchehov  is  a  standard  by  which  modern 
literary  effort  must  be  measured,  and  the  writer  of  prose 
or  poetry  who  is  not  sufficiently  single-minded  to  apply 
the  standard  to  himself  is  of  no  particular  account. 

Though  Tchehov's  genius  is,  strictly  speaking, 
inimitable,  it  deserves  a  much  exacter  study  than  it  has 
yet  received.  The  publication  of  this  volume  of  his 
letters^  hardly  affords  the  occasion  for  that;  but  it  does 
afford  an  opportunity  for  the  examination  of  some  of 
the  chief  constituents  of  his  perfect  art.  These  touch 
us  nearly  because — we  insist  again — the  supreme 
interest  of  Tchehov  is  that  he  is  the  only  great  modern 
artist  in  prose.  He  belongs,  as  we  have  said,  to  us. 
If  he  is  great,  then  he  is  great  not  least  in  virtue  of 
qualities  which  we  may  aspire  to  possess ;  if  he  is  an 
ideal,  he  is  an  ideal  to  which  we  can  refer  ourselves. 
He  had  been  saturated  in  all  the  disillusions  which  we 
regard  as  peculiarly  our  own,  and  every  quality  which 
is  distinctive  of  the  epoch  of  consciousness  in  which 
we  are  living  now  is  reflected  in  him — and  yet,  miracle 
of  miracles,  he  was  a  great  artist.  He  did  not  rub 
his  cheeks  to  produce  a  spurious  colour  of  health ;  he 
did  not  profess  beliefs  which  he  could  not  maintain; 
he  did  not  seek  a  reputation  for  universal  wisdom, 
or  indulge  himself  in  self-gratifying  dreams  of  a 
millennium  which  he  alone  had  the  ability  to  control. 
Fie  was  and  wanted  to  be  nothing  in  particular,  and 
yet,  as  we  read  these  letters  of  his,  we  feel  gradually 
form  within  ourselves  the  conviction  that  he  was  a 
hero — more  than  that,  the  hero  of  our  time. 

It  is  significant  that,  in  reading  Tchehov*s  letters, 

*  Letters  of  Anton  Tchehov.    Translated  by  Constance  Garnett  (Chatto 
&  Windus). 

85 


Aspects  of  Literature 

we  do  not  consider  him  under  the  aspect  of  an  artist. 
We  are  inevitably  fascinated  by  his  character  as  a 
man,  one  who,  by  efforts  which  we  have  most  fre- 
quently to  divine  for  ourselves  from  his  reticences, 
worked  on  the  infinitely  complex  material  of  the 
modern  mind  and  soul,  and  made  it  in  himself  a 
definite,  positive,  and  most  lovable  thing.  He  did 
not  throw  in  his  hand  in  face  of  his  manifold  bewilder- 
ments; he  did  not  fly  for  refuge  to  institutions  in 
which  he  did  not  believe;  he  risked  everything,  in 
Russia,  by  having  no  particular  faith  in  revolution  and 
saying  so.  In  every  conjuncture  of  his  life  that  we  can 
trace  in  his  letters  he  behaved  squarely  by  himself, 
and,  since  he  is  our  great  exemplar,  by  us.  He 
refused  to  march  under  any  political  banner — a  thing, 
let  it  be  remembered,  of  almost  inconceivable  courage 
in  his  country;  he  submitted  to  savagely  hostile 
attacks  for  his  political  indifference;  yet  he  spent 
more  of  his  life  and  energy  in  doing  active  good  to 
his  neighbour  than  all  the  high-souled  professors  of 
liberalism  and  social  reform.  He  undertook  an  almost 
superhuman  journey  to  Sahalin  in  1890  to  investigate 
the  condition  of  the  prisoners  there;  in  1892  he 
spent  the  best  part  of  a  year  as  a  doctor  devising  pre- 
ventive measures  against  the  cholera  in  the  country 
district  where  he  lived,  and,  although  he  had  no  time 
for  the  writing  on  which  his  living  depended,  he 
refused  the  government  pay  in  order  to  preserve  his 
own  independence  of  action ;  in  another  year  he  was 
the  leading  spirit  in  organising  practical  measures  of 
famine  relief  about  Nizhni-Novgorod.  From  his 
childhood  to  his  death,  moreover,  he  was  the  sole 
support  of  his  family.  Measured  by  the  standards 
86 


Thoughts  on  Tchehov 

of  Christian  morality,  Tchehov  was  wholly  a  saint. 
His  self-devotion  was  boundless. 

Yet  we  know  he  was  speaking  nothing  less  than 
the  truth  of  himself  when  he  wrote:  *  It  is  essential 
to  be  indifferent.'  Tchehov  was  indifferent;  but  his 
indifference,  as  a  mere  catalogue  of  his  secret  philan- 
thropies will  show,  was  of  a  curious  kind.  He  made 
of  it,  as  it  were,  an  axiomatic  basis  of  his  own  self- 
discipline.  Since  life  is  what  it  is  and  men  are  what 
they  are,  he  seems  to  have  argued,  everything  depends 
upon  the  individual.  The  stars  are  hostile,  but  love 
is  kind,  and  love  is  within  the  compass  of  any  man 
if  he  will  work  to  attain  it.  In  one  of  his  earliest 
letters  he  defines  true  culture  for  the  benefit  of  his 
brother  Nikolay,  who  lacked  it.  Cultivated  persons, 
he  said,  respect  human  personality;  they  have 
sympathy  not  for  beggars  and  cats  only;  they  respect 
the  property  of  others,  and  therefore  pay  their  debts ; 
they  are  sincere  and  dread  lying  like  fire;  they  do  not 
disparage  themselves  to  arouse  compassion;  they 
have  no  shallow  vanity;  if  they  have  a  talent  they 
respect  it;  they  develop  the  aesthetic  feeling  in  them- 
selves .  .  .  they  seek  as  far  as  possible  to  restrain 
and  ennoble  the  sexual  instinct.  The  letter  from 
which  these  chief  points  are  taken  is  tremulous  with 
sympathy  and  wit.  Tchehov  was  twenty-six  when 
he  wrote  it.  He  concludes  with  the  words:  *  What 
is  needed  is  constant  work  day  and  night,  con- 
stant reading,  study,  will.  Every  hour  is  precious 
for  it.' 

In    that    letter    are    given    all    the    elements    of 

Tchehov  the  man.     He  set  himself  to  achieve  a  new 

humanity,  and  he  achieved  it.    The  indifference  upon 

A.L.  G  87 


Aspects  of  Literature 

which  >Xchehov*s  humanity  _was  .jbuilt  ,was  JiQt  therc- 
fore  a^  moral  indifference;    it  was,  in  the  main,  the 

recognition  and  acceptance  of  the  fact  that  Hfe  itsetf 

is  indifferent.  To  that  he  held  fast  to  the  end.  BifC 
the  conclusion  which  he  drew  from  it  was  not  that  it 
made  no  particular  difference  what  any  one  did,  but 
that  the  attitude  and  character  of  the  individual  were 
all-important.  There  was,  indeed,  no  panacea,  political 
or  religious,  for  the  ills  of  humanity;  but  there  could 
be  a  mitigation  in  men's  soulsN  But  the  new  asceticism 
must  not  be  negative.  It  must  not  cast  away  the 
goods  of  civilisation  because  civilisation  is  largely  a 
sham. 

*  Alas!  I  shall  never  be  a  Tolstoyan.  In  women  I 
love  beauty  above  all  things,  and  in  the  history  of 
mankind,  culture  expressed  in  carpets,  carriages  with 
springs,  and  keenness  of  wit.  Ach!  To  make  haste 
and  become  an  old  man  and  sit  at  a  big  table!' 

Not  that  there  is  a  trace  of  the  hedonist  in 
Tchehov,  who  voluntarily  endured  every  imaginable 
hardship  if  he  thought  he  could  be  of  service  to  his 
fellow-men,  but,  as  he  wrote  elsewhere,  *  we  are 
concerned  with  pluses  alone.*  Since  life  is  what  it  is, 
its  amenities  are  doubly  precious.  Only  they  must 
be  amenities  without  humbug. 

/ 

v^^harisaism,  stupidity,  and  despotism  reign  not 
in  bourgeois  houses  and  prisons  alone.  I  see  them  in 
science,  in  literature,  in  the  younger  generation. 
.  .  .  That  is  why  I  have  no  preference  either  for 
gendarmes,  or  for  butchers,  or  for  scientists,  or  for 
88 


Thoughts  on  Tchehov 

writers,  or  for  the  younger  generation.  I  regard 
trade  marks  and  labels  as  a  superstition.  My  holy 
of  holies  is  the  human  body,  health,  intelligence, 
talent,  inspiration,  Igvj^  and  the  most  absolute  freedorn 
— freedom  fromf^iolence  and  lying,  whatever  forms 
they  "make  take.  This  is  the  programme  I  would 
follow  if  I  were  a  great  artist.'^       xf  -Cvcc^  <^^  ^ 

What  *  the  most  absolute  freedom '  meant  to  Tchehov 
his  whole  life  is  witness.  It  was  a  liberty  of  a  purely 
moral  kind,  a  liberty,  that  is,  achieved  at  the  cost  of 
a  great  effort  in  self-discipline  and  self-refinement. 
In  one  letter  he  says  he  is  going  to  write  a  story  about 
the  son  of  a  serf — Tchehov  was  the  son  of  a  serf — who 
*  squeezed  the  slave  out  of  himself.*  Whether  the 
story  was  ever  written  we  do  not  know,  but  the  process 
is  one  to  which  Tchehov  applied  himself  all  his  life 
long.  He  waged  a  war  of  extermination  against  the 
lie  in  the  soul  in  himself,  and  by  necessary  implication 
in  others  also. 

Y{^  was,  thus,  in  all  things  a  humanist.  He  faced 
the  universe,  but  he  did  not  deny  his  own  souL_ 
There  could  be  for  him  no  antagonism  between 
science  and  literature,  or  science  and  humanity.  They 
were  all  pluses;  it  was  men  who  quarrelled  among 
themselves.  If  men  would  only  develop  a  little  more 
loving-kindness,  things  would  be  better.  The  first 
duty  of  the  artist  was  to  be  a  decent  man. 

*  Solidarity  among  young  writers  is  impossible  and 
unnecessary.  .  .  .  We  cannot  feel  and  think  in  the 
same  way,  our  aims  are  different,  or  we  have  no  aims 
whatever,  we  know  each  other  little  or  not  at  all,  and 

89 


"^A^ 


Aspects  of  Literature 

so  there  is  nothing  on  to  which  this  solidarity  could 
be  securely  hooked.  .  .  .  And  is  there  any  need  for 
it  ?  No,  in  order  to  help  a  colleague,  to  respect  his 
personality  and  work,  to  refrain  from  gossiping  about 
him,  envying  him,  telling  him  lies  and  being  hypo- 
critical, one  does  not  need  so  much  to  be  a  young 
writer  as  simply  a  man.  .  .  .  Let  us  be  ordinary 
people,  let  us  treat  everybody  alike,  and  then  we  shall 
not  need  any  artificially  worked-up  solidarity.' 

It  seems  a  simple  discipline,  this  moral  and 
intellectual  honesty  of  Tchehov's,  yet  in  these  days 
of  conceit  and  coterie  his  letters  strike  us  as  more 
than  strange.  One  predominant  impression  remains: 
it  is  that  of  Tchehov*s  can dojarjof  soul.  Somehow  he 
has  achieved-^WT9r-open  eyes-4h€HHf^ystery-cZ.pureness 
oTEeart;  and  in  that,  though  we  dare  not  analyse  it 
further,  lies  the  secret  of  his  greatness  as  a  writer 
and  of  his  present  importance  to  ourselves. 

[march,  1920. 


/:><.x-<^ 


90  \j 


Americait  Poetry 

We  are  not  yet  immune  from  the  weakness  of  looking 
into  the  back  pages  to  see  what  the  other  men  have 
said;  and  on  this  occasion  we  received  a  salutary- 
shock  from  the  critic  of  the  Detroit  News^  who  informs 
us  that  Mr  Aiken,  *  despite  the  fact  that  he  is  one 
of  the  youngest  and  the  newest,  having  made  his 
debut  less  than  four  years  ago,  .  .  .  demonstrates 
.  .  .  that  he  is  eminently  capable  of  taking  a  solo 
part  with  Edgar  Lee  Masters,  Amy  Lowell,  James 
Oppenheim,  Vachel  Lindsay,  and  Edwin  Arlington 
Robinson.*  The  shock  is  two-fold.  In  a  single 
sentence  we  are  in  danger  of  being  convicted  of 
ignorance,  and,  where  we  can  claim  a  litde  knowledge, 
we  plead  guilty;  we  know  nothing  of  either  Mr 
Oppenheim  or  Mr  Robinson.  This  very  ignorance 
makes  us  cautious  where  we  have  a  little  knowledge 
We  know  something  of  Mr  Lindsay,  something  of 
Mr  Masters,  and  a  good  deal  of  Miss  Lowell,  who 
has  long  been  a  familiar  figure  in  our  anthologies  of 
revolt;  and  we  cannot  understand  on  what  principle 
they  are  assembled  together.  Miss  Lowell  is,  we 
are  persuaded,  a  negligible  poet,  with  a  tenuous  and 
commonplace  impulse  to  write  which  she  teases  out 
into  stupid  *  originalities.*  Of  the  other  two  gentle- 
men we  have  seen  nothing  which  convinces  us  that 
they  are  poets,  but  also  nothing  which  convinces  us 
that  they  may  not  be. 

Moreover,   we  can   understand  how   Mr  Aiken 
might  be  classed  with  them.    All  three  have  in  common 

91 


Aspects  of  Literature 

what  we  may  call  creative  energy.  They  are  all  facile, 
all  obviously  eager  to  say  something,  though  it  is 
not  at  all  obvious  what  they  desire  to  say,  all  with 
an  instinctive  conviction  that  whatever  it  is  it  cannot 
be  said  in  the  old  ways.  Not  one  of  them  produces 
the  certainty  that  this  conviction  is  really  justified, 
or  that  he  has  tested  it;  not  one  has  written  lines 
which  have  the  doom  *  thus  and  not  otherwise  * 
engraved  upon  their  substance;  not  one  has  proved 
that  he  is  capable  of  addressing  himself  to  the  central 
problem  of  poetry,  no  matter  what  technique  be 
employed — how  to  achieve  a  concentrated  unity  of 
aesdietic  impression.  They  are  all  diffuse;  they  seem 
to  be  content  to  lead  a  hundred  indecisive  attacks 
upon  reality  at  once  rather  than  to  persevere  and 
carry  a  single  one  to  a  final  issue;  they  are  all 
multiple,  careless,  and  slipshod — and  they  are  all 
interesting. 

They  are  extremely  interesting.  For  one  thing, 
they  have  all  achieved  what  is,  from  whatever  angle 
one  looks  at  it,  a  very  remarkable  success.  Very  few 
people,  initiate  or  profane,  can  have  opened  Mr 
Lindsay's  *  Congo '  or  Mr  Masters's  *  Spoon  River 
Anthology*  or  Mr  Aiken's  *Jig  of  Forslin'  without  being 
impelled  to  read  on  to  the  end.  That  does  not  very 
often  happen  with  readers  of  a  book  which  professes 
to  be  poetry  save  in  the  case  of  the  thronging  admirers 
of  Miss  Ella  Wheeler  Wilcox,  and  their  similars. 
There  is,  however,  another  case  more  exactly  in  point, 
namely,  that  of  Mr  Kipling.  With  Mr  Kipling  our 
three  American  poets  have  much  in  common,  though 
the  community  must  not  be  unduly  pressed.  Their 
most  obvious  similarity  is  the  prominence  into  which 
92 


American  Poetry 

they  throw  the  novel  interest  in  their  verse.  They 
are,  or  at  moments  they  seem  to  be,  primarily  tellers 
of  stories.  We  will  not  dogmatise  and  say  that  the 
attempt  is  illegitimate;  we  prefer  to  insist  that  to 
tell  a  story  in  poetry  and  keep  it  poetry  is  a  herculean 
task.  It  would  indeed  be  doubly  rash  to  dogmatise, 
for  our  three  poets  desire  to  tell  very  different  stories, 
and  we  are  by  no  means  sure  that  the  emotional 
subtleties  which  Mr  Aiken  in  particular  aims  at 
capturing  are  capable  of  being  exactly  expressed  in 
prose. 

Since  Mr  Aiken  is  the  corpus  vile  before  us  we 
will  henceforward  confine  ourselves  to  him,  though 
we  premise  that  in  spite  of  his  very  sufficient  originality 
he  is  characteristic  of  what  is  most  worth  attention  in 
modern  American  poetry.  Proceeding  then,  we  find 
another  point  of  contact  between  him  and  Mr  Kipling, 
more  important  perhaps  than  the  former,  and  certainly 
more  dangerous.  Both  find  it  apparently  impossible 
to  stem  the  uprush  of  rhetoric.  Perhaps  they  do  not 
try  to;  but  we  will  be  charitable — after  all,  there  is 
enough  good  in  either  of  them  to  justify  charity — 
and  assume  that  the  willingness  of  the  spirit  gives 
way  to  the  weakness  of  the  flesh.  Of  course  we  all 
know  about  Mr  Kipling's  rhetoric;  it  is  a  kind  of 
emanation  of  the  spatial  immensities  with  which  he 
deals — Empires,  the  Seven  Seas,  from  Dublin  to 
Diarbckir.  Mr  Aiken  has  taken  quite  another  province 
for  his  own;  he  is  an  introspective  psychologist. 
But  like  Mr  Kipling  he  prefers  big  business.  His 
inward  eye  roves  over  immensities  at  least  as  vast  as 
Mr  Kipling's  outward.  In  *  The  Charnel  Rose  and 
Other  Poems  '  this  appetite  for  the  illimitable  inane  of 

93 


Aspects  of  Literature 

introspection  seems  to  have  gained  upon  him.    There 
is  much  writing  of  this  kind : — 

*  Dusk,  withdrawing  to  a  single  lamplight 
At  the  end  of  an  infinite  street — 
He  saw  his  ghost  walk  down  that  street  for  ever, 
And  heard  the  eternal  rhythm  of  his  feet. 
And  if  he  should  reach  at  last  that  final  gutter, 
To-day,  or  to-morrow, 

Or,  maybe,  after  the  death  of  himself  and  time; 
And  stand  at  the  ultimate  curbstone  by  the  stars. 
Above  dead  matches,  and  smears  of  paper,  and 

slime ; 
Would  the  secret  of  his  desire 
Blossom  out  of  the  dark  with  a  burst  of  fire  ? 
Or  would  he  hear  the  eternal  arc-lamps  sputter. 
Only  that;   and  see  old  shadows  crawl; 
And  find  the  stars  were  street  lamps  after  all  } 

Music,  quivering  to  a  point  of  silence. 
Drew  his  heart  down  over  the  edge  of  the 
world.  .  .  .' 

It  is  dangerous  for  a  poet  to  conjure  up  infinities 
unless  he  has  made  adequate  preparation  for  keeping 
them  in  control  when  they  appear.  We  are  afraid 
that  Mr  Aiken  is  almost  a  slave  of  the  spirits  he  has 
evoked.  Dostoevsky's  devil  wore  a  shabby  frock- 
coat,  and  was  probably  managing-clerk  to  a  solicitor  at 
twenty-five  shillings  a  week.  Mr  Aiken's  incubus  is, 
unfortunately,  devoid  of  definition ;  he  is  protean  and 
unsatisfactory. 
94 


American  Poetry 

*  I  am  confused  in  webs  and  knots  of  scarlet 
Spun  from  the  darkness; 
Or  shuttled  from  the  mouths  of  thirsty  spiders. 

Madness   for   red!      I    devour   the   leaves   of 

autumn. 
I  tire  of  the  green  of  the  world. 
I  am  myself  a  mouth  for  blood.  .  .  .* 

Perhaps  we  do  wrong  to  ask  ourselves  whether  this 
and  similar  things  mean,  exactly,  anything  ?  Mr 
Aiken  warns  us  that  his  intention  has  been  to  use  the 
idea — *the  impulse  which  sends  us  from  one  dream 
or  ideal  to  another,  always  disillusioned,  always 
creating  for  adoration  some  new  and  subtler  fiction  ' 
— *  as  a  theme  upon  which  one  might  wilfully  build 
a  kind  of  absolute  music*  But  having  given  us  so 
much  instruction,  he  should  have  given  more;  he 
should  have  told  us  in  what  province  of  music  he  has 
been  working.  Are  we  to  look  for  a  music  of  verbal 
melody,  or  for  a  musical  elaboration  of  an  intellectual 
theme  ?  We  infer,  partly  from  the  assurance  that 
*  the  analogy  to  a  musical  symphony  is  close,*  more 
from  the  absence  of  verbal  melody,  that  we  are  to 
expect  the  elaboration  of  a  theme.  In  that  case  the 
fact  that  we  have  a  more  definite  grasp  of  the  theme 
in  the  programme-introduction  than  anywhere  in  the 
poem  itself  points  to  failure.  In  the  poem  *  stars  rush 
up  and  whirl  and  set,*  *  skeletons  whizz  before  and 
whistle  behind,*  *  sands  bubble  and  roses  shoot  soft 
fire,*  and  we  wonder  what  all  the  commotion  is  about. 
When  there  is  a  lull  in  the  pandemonium  we  have  a 
glimpse,  not  of  eternity,  but  precisely  of  1890: — 

95 


Aspects  of  Literature 

*  And  he  saw  red  roses  drop  apart, 
Each  to  disclose  a  charnel  heart.  .  .  . 

We  are  far  from  saying  that  Mr  Aiken's  poetry  is 
merely  a  chemical  compound  of  the  'nineties,  Freud, 
and  introspective  Imperialism;  but  we  do  think  it  is 
liable  to  resolve  at  the  most  inopportune  moments 
into  those  elements,  and  that  such  moments  occur 
with  distressing  frequency  in  the  poem  called  '  The 
Charnel  Rose.'  *  Senlin  '  resists  disruption  longer. 
But  the  same  elements  are  there.  They  are  better 
but  not  sufficiendy  fused.  The  rhetoric  forbids,  for 
there  is  no  cohesion  in  rhetoric.  We  have  the  sense 
that  Mr  Aiken  felt  himself  inadequate  to  his  own  idea, 
and  that  he  tried  to  drown  the  voice  of  his  own  doubt 
by  a  violent  clashing  of  the  cymbals  where  a  quiet 
recitative  was  what  the  theme  demanded  and  his  art 
could  not  ensure. 

*  Death  himself  in  the  rain  .  .  .  death  him- 
self .  .  . 

Death  in  the  savage  sunlight  .  .  .  skeletal 
death  .   .   . 

I  hear  the  clack  of  his  feet. 

Clearly  on  stones,  softly  in  dust. 

Speeding  among  the  trees  with  whistling 
breath. 

Whirling  the  leaves,  tossing  his  hands  from 
waves  .  .  . 

Listen!  the  immortal  footsteps  beat  and 
beat!  .  .  .' 

We  are  persuaded  that  Mr  Aiken  did  not  mean  to  say 

96 


Am  eric  mi  Poetry 

that;  he  wanted  to  say  something  much  subtler.  But 
to  find  exactly  what  he  wanted  might  have  taken 
him  many  months.  He  could  not  wait.  Up  rushed 
the  rhetoric;  bang  went  the  cymbals:  another  page, 
another  book.  And  we,  who  have  seen  great  promise 
in  his  gifts,  are  left  to  collect  some  inadequate  frag- 
ments where  his  original  design  is  not  wholly  lost 
amid  the  poor  expedients  of  the  moment.  For  Mr 
Aiken  never  pauses  to  discriminate.  He  feels  that 
he  needs  rhyme ;  but  any  rhyme  will  do : — 

*  Has  no  one,  in  a  great  autumnal  forest. 
When  the  wind  bares  the  trees  with  mournful 

tone, 
Heard  the  sad  horn  of  Senlin  slowly  blown  ? ' 

So  he  descends  to  a  poetaster's  padding.  He  does 
not  stop  to  consider  whether  his  rhyme  interferes 
with  the  necessary  rhythm  of  his  verse;  or,  if  he 
does,  he  is  in  too  much  of  a  hurry  to  care,  for  the 
interference  occurs  again  and  again.  And  these 
disturbances  and  deviations,  rhetoric  and  the  sacrifice 
of  rhythm  to  shoddy  rhyme,  appear  more  often  than 
the  thematic  outline  itself  emerges. 

In  short,  Mr  Aiken  is,  at  present,  a  poet  whom 
we  have  to  take  on  trust.  We  never  feel  that  he 
meant  exactly  what  he  puts  before  us,  and,  on  the 
whole,  the  evidence  that  he  meant  something  better, 
finer,  more  irrevocably  itself,  is  pretty  strong.  We 
catch  in  his  hurried  verses  at  the  swifdy  passing 
premonition  of  a  frisson  hitherto  unknown  to  us  in 
poetry,  and  as  we  recognise  it,  we  recognise  also  the 
great  distance  he  has  to  travel  along  the  road  of  art, 

97 


Aspects  of  Literature 

and  the  great  labour  that  he  must  perform  before  he 
becomes  something  more  than  a  brilliant  feuilletonist 
in  verse.  It  is  hardly  for  us  to  prophesy  whether  he 
will  devote  the  labour.  His  fluency  tells  us  of  his 
energy,  but  tells  us  nothing  of  its  quality.  We  can 
only  express  our  hope  that  he  will,  and  our  conviction 
that  if  he  were  to  do  so  his  great  pains,  and  our  lesser 
ones   would  be  well  requited. 

[SEPTEMBER,   I919. 


98 


Ro7tsard 

RoNSARD  is  range  now;  but  he  has  not  been  in  that 
position  for  so  very  long,  a  considerably  shorter 
time,  for  instance,  than  any  one  of  the  Elizabethans 
(excepting  Shakespeare)  with  us.  Sainte-Beuve  was 
very  tentative  about  him  until  the  sixties,  when  his 
dubious,  half-patronising  air  made  way  for  a  safe 
enthusiasm.  And,  even  now,  it  can  hardly  be  said 
that  French  critical  opinion  about  him  has  crystallised; 
the  late  George  Wyndham*s  essay  shows  a  more 
convinced  and  better  documented  appreciation  than 
any  that  we  have  read  in  French,  based  as  it  is  on  the 
instinctive  sympathy  which  one  landed  gentleman 
who  dabbles  in  the  arts  feels  towards  another  who 
devotes  himself  to  them — an  admiration  which  does 
not  exclude  familiarity. 

Indeed,  it  is  precisely  because  Ronsard  lends 
himself  so  superbly  as  an  amateur  to  treatment  by 
the  amateur,  that  any  attempt  to  approach  him  more 
closely  seems  to  be  tinged  with  rancour  or  ingratitude. 
There  is  something  churlish  in  the  determination  to 
be  most  on  one's  guard  against  the  engaging  graces 
of  the  amateur,  a  sense  that  one  is  behaving  like  the 
hero  of  a  Gissing  novel ;  but  the  choice  is  not  large. 
One  must  regard  Ronsard  either  as  a  charming 
country  gentleman,  or  as  a  great  historical  figure  in 
the  development  of  French  poetry,  or  as  a  poet;  and 
the  third  aspect  has  a  chance  of  being  the  most 
important, 

Ronsard  is  pre-eminently  the  poet  of  a  simple 

99 


Aspects  of  Literature 

mind.  There  is  nothing  mysterious  about  him  or 
his  poetry;  there  is  not  even  a  perceptible  thread  of 
development  in  either.  They  are  equable,  constant, 
imperturbable,  like  the  bag  of  a  much  invited  gun, 
or  the  innings  of  a  safe  batsman.  The  accomplish- 
ment is  akin  to  an  animal  endowment.  The  nerves, 
instead  of  being,  if  only  for  a  moment,  tense  and 
agitated,  are  steady  to  a  degree  that  can  produce  an 
exasperation  in  a  less  well-appointed  spectator.  He 
will  never  let  himself  down,  or  give  himself  away,  one 
feels,  until  the  admiration  of  an  apparent  sure  restraint 
passes  into  the  conviction  that  there  is  nothing  to 
restrain.  All  Ronsard  the  poet  is  in  his  poetry,  and 
indeed  on  the  surface  of  it. 

Poetry  was  not  therefore,  as  one  is  tempted  to 
think  sometimes,  for  Ronsard  a  game.  There  was 
plenty  of  game  in  it;  Vart  de  Men  Petrarquiser  was 
all  he  claimed  for  himself.  Rut  the  game  would  have 
wearied  any  one  who  was  not  aware  that  he  could  be 
completely  satisfied  and  expressed  by  it.  Ronsard 
was  never  weary.  However  much  one  may  tire  of 
him,  the  fatigue  never  is  infected  by  the  nausea  which 
is  produced  by  some  of  the  mechanical  sonnet  sequences 
of  his  contemporaries.  No  one  reading  Ronsard  ever 
felt  the  tedium  of  mere  nullity.  It  would  be  hard 
to  find  in  the  whole  of  M.  van  Bever's  exhaustive 
edition  of  *  Les  Amours  '^  a  single  piece  which  has  not 
its  sufficient  charge  of  gusto.  When  you  are  tired, 
it  is  because  you  have  had  enough  of  that  particular 
kind  of  man  and  mind;  you  know  him  too  well,  and 
can  reckon  too  closely  the  chances  of  a  shock  of  surprise. 

^Les  Amours.    Par  Pierre  de  Ronsard.    Textc  etabli  par  Ad.  van 
Bever.    Two  volumes.     (Paris :    Cres.) 

lOO 


With  the  more  obvious,  and  in  their  way  delightful, 
surprises  Ronsard  is  generous.  He  can  hold  the 
attention  longer  than  any  poet  of  an  equal  tenuity  of 
matter.  Chiefly  for  two  reasons,  of  which  one  is 
hardly  capable  of  further  analysis.  It  is  the  obvious 
reality  of  his  own  delight  in  *  Petrarchising.'  He  is 
perpetually  in  love  with  making;  he  disports  himself 
with  a  childlike  enthusiasm  in  his  art.  There  are 
moments  when  he  seems  hardly  to  have  passed  beyond 
the  stage  of  naive  wonder  that  words  exist  and  are 
manipulable. 

*  Dous  fut  le  trait,  qu*Amour  hors  de  sa  trousse 
Pour  me  tuer,  me  tira  doucement, 
Quand  je  fus  pris  au  dous  commencement 
l3'une  douceur  si  doucettement  douce.  .  .  .' 

Ronsard  is  here  a  boy  playing  knucklebones  with 
language;  and  some  of  his  characteristic  excellences 
are  little  more  than  a  development  of  this  aptitude, 
with  its  more  striking  incongruities  abated.  A  modern 
ear  can  be  intoxicated  by  the  charming  jingle  of 

*  Petite  Nimfe  folastre, 
Nimfette  que  j^idolastre.   .  .  .* 

One  does  not  pause  to  think  how  incredibly  naive 
it  is  compared  with  Villon,  who  had  not  a  fraction  of 
Ronsard's  scholarship,  or  even  with  Clement  Marot; 
na'ive  both  in  thought  and  art.  As  for  the  stature  of 
the  artist,  we  are  back  with  Charles  of  Orleans.  It 
would  be  idle  to  speculate  what  exactly  Villon  would 
have  made  of  the  atomic  theory  had  he  read  Lucretius ; 

loi 


"jispi^cis  of  LuercUure 

but  we  are  certain  that  he  would  have  done  something 
very  different  from  Ronsard*s 

*  Les  petits  cors,  culbutant  de  travers, 
Parmi  leur  cheute  en  biais  vagabonde, 
Heurtes  ensemble  ont  compose  le  monde, 
S*entr*acrochant  d*acrochemens  divers.  .  .  .* 

For  this  is  not  grown-up;  the  cut  to  simplicity  has 
been  too  short.  So  many  of  Ronsard*s  verses  flow 
over  the  mind,  without  disturbing  it;  fall  charmingly 
on  the  ear,  and  leave  no  echoes.  But  for  the  moment 
we  share  his  enjoyment. 

The  second  cause  of  his  continued  power  of 
attraction  is  doubtless  allied  to  the  first;  it  is  a  naivete 
of  a  particular  kind,  which  differs  from  the  profound 
ingenuousness  of  which  we  have  spoken  by  the  fact 
that  it  is  employed  deliberately.  Conscious  simplicity 
is  art,  and  if  it  is  successful  art  of  no  mean  order. 
Ronsard's  method  of  admitting  us,  as  it  were,  to  his 
conversation  with  himself  is  definitely  his  own.  His 
interruptions  of  a  verse  with  *  Ha  '  or  *  He ';  his 
*  Mon  Dieu,  que  j*aime!  *  or  *  He,  que  ne  suis-je 
puce  ?  *  (the  difference  between  Ronsard*s  flea  and 
Donne's  would  be  worth  examination)  have  in  them 
an  element  of  irresistible  bonhomie.  We  feel  that  he 
is  making  us  his  confidant.  He  does  not  have  to 
tear  agonies  out  of  himself,  so  that  what  he  confides 
has  no  chance  of  making  explicit  any  secrets  of  our 
own.  There  is  nothing  dangerous  about  him;  we 
know  that  he  is  as  safe  as  we  are.  We  are  in  con- 
versation, not  communion.  But  how  effective  and 
engaging  it  is! 

I02 


Ronsard 

*  Vous   ne   le  voulez   pas  ?      Eh   bien,  je   suis 

contant  .  .  .' 

'  He,  Dieu  du  del,  je  n*eusse  pas  pense 
Qu'un  seul  depart  eust  cause  tant  de  peine!  .  .  .* 

or  the  still  more  casual 

*  Un  joieus  deplaisir  qui  douteus  Tepointelle, 
Quoi    repointelle!     ain^ois    le    genne    et    le 

martelle  .  .  .' 

Of  this  device  of  style  our  own  Elizabethans  were  to 
make  more  profitable  use  than  Ronsard.  At  their 
best  they  packed  an  intensity  of  dramatic  significance 
into  conversational  language,  of  which  Ronsard  had 
no  inkling;  and  even  a  strict  contemporary  of  his, 
like  Wyatt,  could  touch  cords  more  intimate  by  the 
same  means.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  Ronsard  never 
fails  of  his  own  effect,  which  is  not  to  convince  us 
emotionally,  but  to  compel  us  to  listen.  His  unex- 
pected address  to  himself  or  to  us  is  a  new  ornament 
for  us  to  admire,  not  a  new  method  for  him  to  express 
a  new  thing;  and  the  suggestion  of  new  rhythms 
that  might  thus  be  attained  is  never  fully  worked 
out. 

*  Mais  tu  ne  seras  plus  ?    Et  puis  ?  .  .  .  quand 

la  paleur 
Qui  blemist  notre  corps  sans  chaleur  ne  lumiere 
Nous  perd  le  sentiment  ?  .  .  . 

The  ampleness  of  that  reverberance  is  almost  isolated. 

A.L.  H  103 


Aspects  of  Literature 

Ronsard's  resources  are  indeed  few.  But  he 
needed  few.  His  simple  mind  was  at  ease  in  a 
machinery  of  commonplaces,  and  he  makes  the  pleasant 
impression  of  one  to  whom  commonplaces  are  real. 
He  felt  them  all  over  again.  One  imagines  him 
reading  the  classics — the  Iliad  in  three  days,  or  his 
beloved  companion  *  sous  le  bois  amoureux,'  Tibullus 
— with  an  unfailing  delight  in  all  the  concatenations 
of  phrase  which  are  foisted  on  to  unripe  youth  nowa- 
days in  the  pages  of  a  Gradus.  One  might  almost  say 
that  he  saw  his  loves  at  second-hand,  through  alien 
eyes,  were  it  not  that  he  faced  them  with  some  direct- 
ness as  physical  beings,  and  that  the  artificiality 
implied  in  the  criticism  is  incongruous  with  the 
honesty  of  such  a  natural  man.  But  apart  from  a  few 
particulars  that  would  find  a  place  in  a  census  paper 
one  would  be  hard  put  to  it  to  distinguish  Cassandre 
from  Helene.  What  charming  things  Ronsard  has 
to  say  of  either  might  be  said  of  any  charming  woman 
— *  le  mignard  embonpoint  de  ce  sein,* — 

*  Petit  nombril,  que  mon  penser  adore, 
Non  pas  mon  ceil,  qui  n'eut  oncques  ce  bien  .  .  .' 

And  though  he  assures  Hdfene  that  she  has  turned 
him  from  his  grave  early  style,  *  qui  pour  chanter  si 
bas  n*est  point  ordonne,*  the  difference  is  too  hard  to 
detect;  one  is  forced  to  conclude  that  it  is  precisely 
the  difference  between  a  court  lady  and  an  inn- 
keeper's daughter.  As  far  as  art  is  concerned  the 
most  definite  and  distinctive  thing  that  Ronsard  had 
to  say  of  any  of  his  ladies  is  said  of  one  to  whom  he 
put  forward  none  of  his  usually  engrossing  pretensions. 
104 


Ronsard 

It  was  the  complexion  of  Marguerite  of  Navarre  of 
which  he  wrote: — 

*  De  vif  cinabre  estoit  faicte  sa  joue, 
Pareille  au  teint  d'un  rougissant  oeillet, 
Ou  d'une  fraize,  alors  que  dans  de  laict 
Dessus  le  hault  de  la  cresme  se  joue.* 

That  is,  whether  it  belonged  to  Marguerite  or  not,  a 
divine  complexion.  It  is  the  kind  of  thing  that 
cannot  be  said  about  two  ladies;  the  image  is  too 
precise  to  be  interchangeable.  This  may  be  a  reason 
why  it  was  applied  to  a  lady  hors  concours  for  Ronsard. 
But  we  need,  in  fact,  seek  no  reason  other  than 
the  circumscription  of  Ronsard's  poetical  gifts.  They 
reduce  to  only  two — the  gift  of  convinced  common- 
place, and  the  gift  of  simple  melody.  His  common- 
place is  genuine  commonplace,  quite  distinct  from 
the  tense  and  pregnant  condensation  of  a  lifetime  of 
impassioned  experience  in  Dante  or  Shakespeare; 
things  that  would  occur  to  a  bookish  country  gentle- 
man in  after-dinner  conversation,  the  sentiments  that 
such  a  rare  and  amiable  person  would  underscore  in 
his  Horace.  (From  a  not  unimportant  angle  Ronsard 
is  a  minor  Horace.)  These  things  are  the  warp  of 
his  poetry;  they  range  from  the  familiar  *  Le  temps 
s'en  va '  to  the  masterly  straightforwardness  of 

*  plus  heureus  celui  qui  la  fera 
Et  femme  et  m^re,  en  lieu  d*une  pucelle.' 

His  melody,  likewise,  is  genuine  melody;    it  is  irre- 
pressible.     It   led   him   to   belie   his   own    professed 

105 


Aspects  of  Literature 

seriousness.  He  could  not  stop  his  sonnets  from 
rippling  even  when  he  pretended  to  passionate 
argument.  Life  came  easily  to  him;  he  was  never 
weary  of  it,  at  the  most  he  acknowledged  that  he  was 
*  saoul  de  la  vie.'  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that 
his  remonstrances  as  the  tortured  lover  have  a  trick 
of  opening  to  a  delightful  tune : — 

*  Rens-moi    mon    coeur,    rens-moi    mon    coeur 

pillarde.  .  .  .* 

In  another  form  this  melody  more  closely  recalls 
Thomas  Campion: — 

*  Seule  je  Tai  veue,  aussi  je  meurs  pour  elle.  .  .  .' 

But  to  compare  Ronsard*s  sonnet  with  *  Follow  your 
saint  *  is  to  see  how  infinitely  more  subtle  a  master  of 
lyrical  music  was  the  Elizabethan  than  the  great 
French  lyrist  of  the  Renaissance.  From  first  to  last 
Ronsard  was  an  amateur.  [September,  191 9. 


106 


Samuel  Butler 

The  appearance  of  a  new  impression  of  The  Way  of 
all  Flesh  ^  in  Mr  Fifield's  edition  of  Samuel  Butler's 
works  gives  us  an  occasion  to  consider  more  calmly 
the  merits  and  the  failings  of  that  entertaining  story. 
Like  all  unique  works  of  authors  who  stand,  even 
to  the  most  obvious  apprehension,  aside  from  the 
general  path,  it  has  been  overwhelmed  with  super- 
latives. The  case  is  familiar  enough  and  the  explana- 
tion is  simple  and  brutal.  It  is  hardly  worth  while 
to  give  it.  The  truth  is  that  although  there  is  no 
inherent  reason  why  the  isolated  novel  of  an  author 
who  devotes  himself  to  other  forms  should  not  be 
*  one  of  the  great  novels  of  the  world,'  the  probabilities 
tell  heavily  against  it.  On  the  other  hand,  an  isolated 
novel  makes  a  good  stick  to  beat  the  age.  It  is  fairly 
certain  to  have  something  sufficiently  unique  about 
it  to  be  useful  for  the  purpose.  Even  its  blemishes 
have  a  knack  of  being  sui  generis.  To  elevate  it  is, 
therefore,  bound  to  imply  the  diminution  of  its 
contemporaries. 

Yet,  apart  from  the  general  argument,  there  are 
particular  reasons  why  the  praise  of  The  Way  of  all 
Flesh  should  be  circumspect.  Samuel  Butler  knew 
extraordinarily  well  what  he  was  about.  His  novel 
was  written  intermittently  between  1872  and  1884 
when  he  abandoned  it.  In  the  twenty  remaining  years 
of  his  life  he  did  nothing  to  it,  and  we  have  Mr 

^The  Way  of  all  Flesh.     By  Samuel  Butler,     nth  impression  of 
2nd  edition.    (Fifield.) 

107 


Aspects  of  Literature 

Streatfeild's  word  for  it  that  *  he  professed  himself 
dissatisfied  with  it  as  a  whole,  and  always  intended 
to  rewrite,  or  at  any  rate,  to  revise  it.*  We  could 
have  deduced  as  much  from  his  refusal  to  publish 
the  book.  The  certainty  of  commercial  failure  never 
deterred  Butler  from  publication;  he  was  in  the 
happy  situation  of  being  able  to  publish  at  his  own 
expense  a  book  of  whose  merit  he  was  himself  satisfied. 
His  only  reason  for  abandoning  The  Way  of  all  Flesh 
was  his  own  dissatisfaction  with  it.  His  instruction 
that  it  should  be  published  in  its  present  form  after 
his  death  proves  nothing  against  his  own  estimate. 
Butler  knew,  at  least  as  well  as  we,  that  the  good 
things  in  his  book  were  legion.  He  did  not  wish  the 
world  or  his  own  reputation  to  lose  the  benefit  of 
them. 

But  there  are  differences  between  a  novel  which 
contains  innumerable  good  things  and  a  great  novel. 
The  most  important  is  that  a  great  novel  does  not 
contain  innumerable  good  things.  You  may  not 
pick  out  the  plums,  because  the  pudding  falls  to 
pieces  if  you  do.  In  The  Way  of  all  Fleshy  however,  a 
compere  is  always  present  whose  business  it  is  to  say 
good  things.  His  perpetual  flow  of  asides  is  pleasant 
because  the  asides  are  piquant  and,  in  their  way,  to 
the  point.  Butler*s  mind,  being  a  good  mind,  had  a 
predilection  for  the  object,  and  his  detestation  of  the 
rotunder  platitudes  of  a  Greek  chorus,  if  nothing 
else,  had  taught  him  that  a  corner-man  should  have 
something  to  say  on  the  subject  in  hand.  His  argu- 
ments are  designed  to  assist  his  narrative;  moreover, 
they  are  sympathetic  to  the  modern  mind.  An 
enlightened  hedonism  is  about  all  that  is  left  to  us, 
io8 


Samuel  Butler 

and  Butler's  hatred  of  humbug  is,  though  a  little  more 
placid,  like  our  own.  We  share  his  ethical  likes  and 
dislikes.  As  an  audience  we  are  ready  to  laugh  at  his 
asides,  and,  on  the  first  night  at  least,  to  laugh  at 
them  even  when  they  interrupt  the  play. 

But  our  liking  for  the  theses  cannot  alter  the  fact 
that  The  Way  of  all  Flesh  is  a  roman  a  theses.  Not 
that  there  is  anything  wrong  with  the  roman  a  theses^ 
if  the  theses  emerge  from  the  narrative  without  its 
having  to  be  obviously  doctored.  Nor  does  it  matter 
very  much  that  a  compere  should  be  present  all  the 
while,  provided  that  he  does  not  take  upon  himself 
to  replace  the  demonstration  the  narrative  must  afford, 
by  arguments  outside  it.  But  what  happens  in  The 
Way  of  all  Flesh  ?  We  may  leave  aside  the  minor 
thesis  of  heredity,  for  it  emerges,  gently  enough, 
from  the  story;  besides,  we  are  not  quite  sure  what 
it  is.  We  have  no  doubt,  on  the  other  hand,  about  the 
major  thesis;  it  is  blazoned  on  the  title  page,  with  its 
sub-malicious  quotation  from  St  Paul  to  the  Romans. 
*  We  know  that  all  things  work  together  for  good  to 
them  that  love  God.'  The  necessary  gloss  on  this 
text  is  given  in  Chapter  LXVIII,  where  Ernest,  after 
his  arrest,  is  thus  described: — 

*  He  had  nothing  more  to  lose;  money,  friends, 
character,  all  were  gone  for  a  very  long  time,  if  not  for 
ever;  but  there  was  something  else  also  that  had  taken 
its  flight  along  with  these.  I  mean  the  fear  of  that 
which  man  could  do  unto  him.  Cantabit  vacuus. 
Who  could  hurt  him  more  than  he  had  been  hurt 
already  ?  Let  him  but  be  able  to  earn  his  bread,  and 
he  knew  of  nothing  which  he  dared  not  venture  if 

109 


Aspects  of  Literature 

it  would  make  the  world  a  happier  place  for  those 
who  were  young  and  lovable.  Herein  he  found  so 
much  comfort  that  he  almost  wished  he  had  lost  his 
reputation  even  more  completely — for  he  saw  that 
it  was  like  a  man's  life  which  may  be  found  of  them 
that  lose  it  and  lost  of  them  that  would  find  it.  He 
should  not  have  had  the  courage  to  give  up  all  for 
Christ's  sake,  but  now  Christ  had  mercifully  taken 
all,  and  lo!   it  seemed  as  though  all  were  found. 

*  As  the  days  went  slowly  by  he  came  to  see  that 
Christianity  and  the  denial  of  Christianity  after  all 
met  as  much  as  any  other  extremes  do;  it  was  a 
fight  about  names — not  about  things;  practically  the 
Church  of  Rome,  the  Church  of  England,  and  the 
freethinker  have  the  same  ideal  standard  and  meet  in 
the  gentleman;  for  he  is  the  most  perfect  saint  who 
is  the  most  perfect  gentleman.  .  .  .' 

With  this  help  the  text  and  the  thesis  can  be 
translated  :  *  All  experience  does  a  gentleman  good.' 
It  is  the  kind  of  thing  we  should  like  very  much  to 
believe;  as  an  article  of  faith  it  was  held  with  passion 
and  vehemence  by  Dostoevsky,  though  the  connotation 
of  the  word  *  gentleman  '  was  for  him  very  different 
from  the  connotation  it  had  for  Butler.  (Butler's 
gentleman,  it  should  be  said  in  passing,  was  very 
much  the  ideal  of  a  period,  and  not  at  all  quod  semper^ 
quod  uhique ;  a  very  Victorian  anti-Victorianism.) 
Dostoevsky  worked  his  thesis  out  with  a  ruthless 
devotion  to  realistic  probability.  He  emptied  the 
cornucopia  of  misery  upon  his  heroes  and  drove  them 
to  suicide  one  after  another;  and  then  had  the 
audacity  to  challenge  the  world  to  say  that  they  were 
no 


Samuel  Butler 

not  better,  more  human,  and  more  lovable  for  the 
disaster  m  which  they  were  inevitably  overwhelmed. 
And,  though  it  is  hard  to  say  *  Yes  '  to  his  challenge, 
it  is  harder  still  to  say  *  No.* 

In  the  case  of  Ernest  Pontifex,  however,  we  do 
not  care  to  respond  to  the  challenge  at  all.  The 
experiment  is  faked  and  proves  nothing.  It  is  mere 
humbug  to  declare  that  a  man  has  been  thrown  into 
the  waters  of  life  to  sink  or  swim,  when  there  is  an 
anxious  but  cool-headed  friend  on  the  bank  with  a 
;^7o,ooo  life-belt  to  throw  after  him  the  moment  his 
head  goes  under.  That  is  neither  danger  nor  experi- 
ence. Even  if  Ernest  Pontifex  knew  nothing  of  the 
future  awaiting  him  (as  we  are  assured  he  did  not) 
it  makes  no  difference.  We  know  he  cannot  sink; 
he  is  a  lay  figure  with  a  pneumatic  body.  Whether 
he  became  a  lay  figure  for  Butler  also  we  cannot  say; 
we  can  merely  register  the  fact  that  the  book  breaks 
down  after  Ernest's  misadventure  with  Miss  Maitland, 
a  deplorably  unsubstantial  episode  to  be  the  crisis 
of  a  piece  of  writing  so  firm  in  texture  and  solid  in 
values  as  the  preceding  chapters.  Ernest  as  a  man  has 
an  intense  non-existence. 

After  all,  as  far  as  the  positive  side  of  The  Way  of 
all  Flesh '  is  concerned,  Butler's  eggs  are  all  in  one 
basket.  If  the  adult  Ernest  does  not  materialise,  the 
book  hangs  in  empty  air.  Whatever  it  may  be  instead 
it  is  not  a  great  novel,  nor  even  a  good  one.  So  much 
established,  we  may  begin  to  collect  the  good  things. 
Christina  is  the  best  of  them.  She  is,  by  any  standard, 
a  remarkable  creation.  Butler  was  *  all  round  ' 
Christina.  Both  by  analysis  and  synthesis  she  is 
wholly  his.     He  can  produce  her  in  either  way.     She 

III 


Aspects  of  Literature 

lives  as  flesh  and  blood  and  has  not  a  little  of  our 
affection;  she  is  also  constructed  by  definition,  *  If 
it  were  not  too  awful  a  thing  to  say  of  anybody,  she 
meant  well ' — the  whole  phrase  gives  exactly  Christina's 
stature.  Alethea  Pontifex  is  really  a  bluff;  but  the 
bluff  succeeds,  largely  because,  having  experience  of 
Christina,  we  dare  not  call  it.  Mrs  Jupp  is  trium- 
phantly complete;  there  are  even  moments  when  she 
seems  as  great  as  Mrs  Quickly.  The  novels  that 
contain  three  such  women  (or  two  if  we  reckon  the 
uncertain  Alethea,  who  is  really  only  a  vehicle  for 
Butler's  very  best  sayings,  as  cancelled  by  the  non- 
existent Ellen)  can  be  counted,  we  suppose,  on  our 
ten  fingers. 

Of  the  men,  Theobald  is  well  worked  out  (in  both 
senses  of  the  word).  But  we  know  little  of  what  went 
on  inside  him.  We  can  fill  out  Christina  with  her 
inimitable  day-dreams;  Theobald  remains  something 
of  a  skeleton,  whereas  we  have  no  difficulty  at  all 
with  Dr  Skinner,  of  Roughborough.  We  have  a 
sense  of  him  in  retirement  steadily  filling  the  shelves 
with  volumes  of  Skinner,  and  we  know  how  it  was 
done.  When  he  reappears  we  assume  the  continuity 
of  his  existence  without  demur.  The  glimpse  of 
George  Pontifex  is  also  satisfying;  after  the  christening 
party  we  know  him  for  a  solid  reality.  Pryer  was  half- 
created  when  his  name  was  chosen.  Butler  did  the 
rest  in  a  single  paragraph  which  contains  a  perfect 
delineation  of  *  the  Oxford  manner '  twenty  years 
before  it  had  become  a  disease  known  to  ordinary 
diagnosis.  The  curious  may  find  this  towards  the 
beginning  of  Chapter  LI.  But  Ernest,  upon  whom 
so    much    depends,    is    a    phantom — a    dream-child 

112 


Samuel  Butler 

waiting  the  incarnation  which  Butler  refused  him  for 
twenty  years.  Was  it  laziness,  was  it  a  felt  incapacity  ? 
We  do  not  know;  but  in  the  case  of  a  novelist  it  is 
our  duty  to  believe  the  worst.  The  particularity  of 
our  attitude  to  Butler  appears  in  the  fact  that  we  are 
disappointed,  not  with  him,  but  with  Ernest.  We 
are  even  angry  with  that  young  man.  If  it  had  not 
been  for  him,  we  believe.  The  Way  of  all  Flesh  might 
have  appeared  in  1882;  it  might  have  short-circuited 
Robert  Elsmere,  [june,  19 19. 


We  approach  the  biography  of  an  author  whom  we 
respect,  and  therefore  have  thought  about,  with 
contradictory  feelings.  We  are  excited  at  the  thought 
of  finding  our  conclusions  reinforced,  and  appre- 
hensive less  the  compact  and  definite  figure  which 
our  imaginations  have  gradually  shaped  should  become 
vague  and  incoherent  and  dull.  It  is  a  pity  to 
purchase  enlightenment  at  the  cost  of  definition;  and 
it  is  more  important  that  we  should  have  a  clear 
notion  of  the  final  shape  of  a  man  in  whom  we  are 
interested  than  an  exact  record  of  his  phases. 

The  essential  quality  of  great  artists  is  incommen- 
surable with  biography;  they  seem  to  be  unconsciously 
engaged  in  a  perpetual  evasion  of  the  event.  All  that 
piety  can  do  for  them  is  beside  the  mark.  Their 
wilful  spirit  is  fled  before  the  last  stone  of  the 
mausoleum  can  be  got  in  place,  and  as  it  flies  it  jogs 
the  elbow  of  the  cup-bearer  and  his  libation  is  spilt 
idly  upon  the  ground.  Although  it  would  be  too 
much  and  too  ungrateful  to  say  that  the  monumental 
piety  of  Mr  Festing  Jones  has  been  similarly  turned 

113 


Aspects  of  Literature 

to  derision — after  all,  Butler  was  not  a  great  man — 
we  feel  that  something  analogous  has  happened. 
This  laborious  building  is  a  great  deal  too  large  for 
him  to  dwell  in.  He  had  made  himself  a  cosy  habita- 
tion in  the  Note-Books^  with  the  fire  in  the  right  place 
and  fairly  impervious  to  the  direct  draughts  of 
criticism.  In  a  two-volume  memoir^  he  shivers 
perceptibly,  and  at  moments  he  looks  faintly  ridiculous, 
more  than  faintly  pathetic. 

And  if  it  be  said  that  a  biography  should  make  no 
difference  to  our  estimate  of  the  man  who  lives  and 
has  his  being  in  his  published  works,  we  reply  that 
it  shifts  the  emphasis.  An  amusingly  wrong-headed 
book  about  Homer  is  a  peccadillo;  ten  years  of  life 
lavished  upon  it  is  something  a  good  deal  more  serious. 
And  even  The  Way  of  all  Fleshy  which  as  an  experi- 
mental novel  is  a  very  considerable  achievement, 
becomes  something  different  when  we  have  to  regard 
it  as  a  laborious  and  infinitely  careful  record  of 
experienced  fact.  Further  still,  even  the  edge  of 
the  perfected  inconsequence  of  certain  of  the  *  Notes  * 
is  somewhat  dulled  when  we  see  the  trick  of  it  being 
exercised.  The  origin  of  the  amusing  remark  on 
Blake,  who  *  was  no  good  because  he  learnt  Italian 
at  over  60  in  order  to  read  Dante,  and  we  know 
Dante  was  no  good  because  he  was  so  fond  of  Virgil, 
and  Virgil  was  no  good  because  Tennyson  ran  him 
— well,  Tennyson  goes  without  saying,'  is  to  be 
found  in  *  No,  I  don't  like  Lamb.  You  see.  Canon 
Ainger  writes  about  him,  and  Canon  Ainger  goes  to 
tea  with  my  aunts.*     Repeated,  it  becomes  merely  a 

1  Samuel  Butler,  author  of  '  Erewhon  '  (i  835-1 902)  :  a  Memoir.    By 
Henry  Festing  Jones.     2  vols.     (Macmillan!) 

114 


Samuel  Butler 

clever  way  of  being  stupid,  as  we  should  be  if  we  were 
tempted  to  say  we  couldn't  bear  Handel,  because 
Butler  was  mad  on  him,  and  Butler  was  no  good 
because  he  was  run  by  Mr  Jones,  and,  well,  Mr 
Jones  goes  without  saying. 

Nevertheless,  though  Butler  lives  with  much 
discomfort  and  some  danger  in  Mr  Jones's  tabernacle, 
he  does  continue  to  live.  What  his  head  loses  by  the 
inquisition  of  a  biography  his  heart  gains,  though  we 
wonder  whether  Butler  himself  would  have  smiled 
upon  the  exchange.  Butler  loses  almost  the  last 
vestige  of  a  title  to  be  considered  a  creative  artist  when 
the  incredible  fact  is  revealed  that  the  letters  of 
Theobald  and  Christina  in  The  Way  of  all  Flesh  are 
merely  reproduced  from  those  which  his  father  and 
mother  sent  him.  Nor  was  Butler,  even  as  a  copyist, 
always  adequate  to  his  originals.  The  brilliantly 
witty  letters  of  Miss  Savage,  by  which  the  first 
volume  is  made  precious,  seem  to  us  to  indicate  a 
real  woman  upon  whom  something  more  substantial 
might  have  been  modelled  than  the  delightful  but 
evanescent  picture  of  Alethea  Pontifex.  Here,  at 
least,  is  a  picture  of  Miss  Savage  and  Butler  together 
which,  to  our  sense,  gives  some  common  element  in 
both  which  escaped  the  expression  of  the  author  of 
The  Way  of  all  Flesh  :— 

*  I  like  the  cherry-eating  scene,  too  [Miss  Savage 
wrote  after  reading  the  MS.  of  Alfs  and  Sanctuaries^ 
because  it  reminded  me  of  your  eating  cherries  when 
I  first  knew  you.  One  day  when  I  was  going  to  the 
gallery,  a  very  hot  day  I  remember,  I  met  you  on 
the  shady  side  of  Berners  Street,  eating  cherries  out 

115 


Aspects  of  Literature 

of  a  basket.  Like  your  Italian  friends,  you  were 
perfectly  silent  with  content,  and  you  handed  the 
basket  to  me  as  I  was  passing,  without  saying  a  word. 
I  pulled  out  a  handful  and  went  on  my  way  rejoicing, 
without  saying  a  word  either.  I  had  not  before 
perceived  you  to  be  different  from  any  one  else.  I 
was  like  Peter  Bell  and  the  primrose  with  the  yellow 
brim.  As  I  went  away  to  France  a  day  or  two  after 
that  and  did  not  see  you  again  for  months,  the  recol- 
lection of  you  as  you  were  eating  cherries  in  Berners 
Street  abode  with  me  and  pleased  me  greatly.' 

Again,  we  feel  that  the  unsubstantial  Towneley 
of  the  novel  should  have  been  more  like  flesh  and 
blood  when  we  learn  that  he  too  was  drawn  from  the 
life,  and  from  a  life  which  was  intimately  connected 
with  Butler's.  Here,  most  evidently,  the  heart  gains 
what  the  head  loses,  for  the  story  of  Butler's  long- 
suffering  generosity  to  Charles  Paine  Pauli  is  almost 
beyond  belief  and  comprehension.  Butler  had  met 
Pauli,  who  was  two  years  his  junior,  in  New  Zealand, 
and  had  conceived  a  passionate  admiration  for  him. 
Learning  that  he  desired  to  read  for  the  bar,  Butler, 
who  had  made  an  unexpected  success  of  his  sheep- 
farming,  offered  to  lend  him  ;^ioo  to  get  to  England 
and  ;^2oo  a  year  until  he  was  called.  Very  shortly 
after  they  both  arrived  in  England,  Pauli  separated 
from  Butler,  refusing  even  to  let  him  know  his 
address,  and  thenceforward  paid  him  one  brief  visit 
every  day.  He  continued,  however,  to  draw  his 
allowance  regularly  until  his  death  all  through  the 
period  when,  owing  to  the  failure  of  Butler's  invest- 
ments, ;^2oo  seems  to  have  been  a  good  deal  more 
ii6 


Samuel  Butler 

than  one-half  Butler's  income.  At  Pauli's  death  in 
1897  Butler  discovered  what  he  must  surely  at 
moments  have  suspected,  that  Pauli  had  been  making 
between  ;^5oo  and  ;^8oo  at  the  bar,  and  had  left 
about  ;^9ooo — not  to  Butler.  Butler  wrote  an  account 
of  the  affair  after  Pauli's  death  which  is  strangely 
self-revealing : — 

*.  .  .  Everything  that  he  had  was  good,  and  he 
was  such  a  fine  handsome  fellow,  with  such  an 
attractive  manner  that  to  me  he  seemed  everything 
I  should  like  myself  to  be,  but  knew  very  well  that 
I  was  not.  .  .  . 

*  I  had  felt  from  the  very  beginning  that  my 
intimacy  with  Pauli  was  only  superficial,  and  I  also 
perceived  more  and  more  that  I  bored  him.  .  .  .  He 
liked  society  and  I  hated  it.  Moreover,  he  was  at 
times  very  irritable  and  would  find  continual  fault 
with  me;  often,  I  have  no  doubt,  justly,  but  often, 
as  it  seemed  to  me,  unreasonably.  Devoted  to  him 
as  I  continued  to  be  for  many  years,  those  years  were 
very  unhappy  as  well  as  very  happy  ones. 

*  I  set  down  a  great  deal  to  his  ill-health,  no  doubt 
truly;  a  great  deal  more,  I  was  sure,  was  my  own 
fault — and  I  am  so  still ;  I  excused  much  on  the  score 
of  his  poverty  and  his  dependence  on  myself — for  his 
father  and  mother,  when  it  came  to  the  point,  could 
do  nothing  for  him.;  I  was  his  host  and  was  bound 
to  forbear  on  that  ground  if  on  no  other.  I  always 
hoped  that,  as  time  went  on,  and  he  saw  how 
absolutely  devoted  to  him  I  was,  and  what  unbounded 
confidence  I  had  in  him,  and  how  I  forgave  him  over 
and  over  again  for  treatment  which  I  would  not  have 

117 


Aspects  of  Literature 

stood  for  a  moment  from  any  one  else — I  always 
hoped  that  he  would  soften  and  deal  as  frankly  and 
unreservedly  with  me  as  I  with  him;  but,  though  for 
some  fifteen  years  I  hoped  this,  in  the  end  I  gave  it 
up,  and  settled  down  into  a  resolve  from  which  I  never 
departed — to  do  all  I  could  for  him,  to  avoid  friction 
of  every  kind,  and  to  make  the  best  of  things  for 
him  and  myself  that  circumstances  would  allow.* 

In  love  such  as  this  there  is  a  feminine  tenderness 
and  devotion  which  positively  illuminates  what  other- 
wise appears  to  be  a  streak  of  perversity  in  Butler; 
and  the  illumination  becomes  still  more  certain  when 
we  read  Butler's  letters  to  the  young  Swiss,  Hans 
Faesch,  to  whom  Out  into  the  Night  was  written. 
Faesch  had  departed  for  Singapore. 

*  The  sooner  we  all  of  us,*  wrote  Butler,  *  as  men 
of  sense  and  sober  reason,  get  through  the  very  acute, 
poignant  sorrow  which  we  now  feel,  the  better  for 
us  all.  There  is  no  fear  of  any  of  us  forgetting  when 
the  acute  stage  is  passed.  I  should  be  ashamed  of 
myself  for  having  felt  as  keenly  and  spoken  with 
as  little  reserve  as  I  have  if  it  were  any  one  but  you; 
but  I  feel  no  shame  at  any  length  to  which  grief  can 
take  me  when  it  is  about  you.  I  can  call  to  mind 
no  word  which  ever  passed  between  us  three  which 
had  been  better  unspoken:  no  syllable  of  irritation 
or  unkindness;  nothing  but  goodness  and  kindness 
ever  came  out  of  you,  and  such  as  our  best  was  we 
gave  it  to  you  as  you  gave  yours  to  us.  Who  may  not 
well  be  plunged  up  to  the  lips  in  sorrow  at  parting 
from  one  of  whom  he  can  say  this  in  all  soberness 
Ii8 


Samuel  Butler 

and  truth  ?     I  feel  as  though  I  had  lost  an  only  son 
with  no  hope  of  another.  .  .  .' 

The  love  is  almost  pathetically  lavish.  Letters  like 
these  reveal  to  us  a  man  so  avid  of  affection  that  he 
must  of  necessity  erect  every  barrier  and  defence  to 
avoid  a  mortal  wound.  His  sensibility  was  rentree^ 
probably  as  a  consequence  of  his  appalling  childhood; 
and  the  indication  helps  us  to  understand  not  only 
the  inordinate  suspiciousness  with  which  he  behaved 
to  Darwin,  but  the  extent  to  which  irony  was  his 
favoured  weapon.  The  most  threatening  danger  for 
such  a  man  is  to  take  the  professions  of  the  world  at 
their  face  value;  he  can  inoculate  himself  only  by 
irony.  The  more  extreme  his  case,  the  more  devouring 
the  hunger  to  love  and  be  loved,  the  more  extreme 
the  irony,  and  in  Butler  it  reached  the  absolute 
maximum,  which  is  to  interpret  the  professions  of 
the  world  as  their  exact  opposite.  As  a  reviewer 
of  the  Note-Books  in  The  Athenaeum  recently  said, 
Butler's  method  was  to  stand  propositions  on  their 
heads.  He  universalised  his  method;  he  applied  it 
not  merely  to  scientific  propositions  of  fact,  but,  even 
more  ruthlessly,  to  the  converse  of  daily  life.  He 
divided  up  the  world  into  a  vast  majority  who  meant 
the  opposite  of  what  they  said,  and  an  infinitesimal 
minority  who  were  sincere.  The  truth  that  the  vast 
majority  are  borderland  cases  escaped  him,  largely 
because  he  was  compelled  by  his  isolation  to  regard 
all  his  honest  beliefs  as  proven  certainties.  That  a 
man  could  like  and  admire  him  and  yet  regard  him 
as  in  many  things  mistaken  and  wrong-headed  was 
strictly  incomprehensible  to  him,  and  from  this  angle 
A.L.  I  119 


Aspects  of  Literature 

the  curious  relations  which  existed  between  him  and 
Dr  Richard  Garnett  of  the  British  Museum  are  of 
uncommon  interest.  They  afford  a  strange  example 
of  mutual  mystification. 

Thus  at  least  one-half  the  world,  not  of  life  only 
(which  does  not  greatly  matter,  for  one  can  live  as 
happily  with  half  the  world  as  with  the  whole)  but  of 
thought,  was  closed  to  him.  Most  of  the  poetry, 
the  music,  and  the  art  of  the  world  was  humbug  to 
him,  and  it  was  only  by  insisting  that  Homer  and 
Shakespeare  were  exactly  like  himself  that  he  managed 
to  except  them  from  his  natural  aversion.  So,  in 
the  last  resort,  he  humbugged  himself  quite  as 
vehemently  as  he  imagined  the  majority  of  men  were 
engaged  in  humbugging  him.  If  his  standard  of 
truth  was  higher  than  that  of  the  many,  it  was  lower 
than  that  of  the  few.  There  is  a  kingdom  where  the 
crass  division  into  sheep  and  goats  is  merely  clumsy 
and  inopportune.  In  the  slow  meanderings  of  this 
Memoir  we  too  often  catch  a  glimpse  of  Butler  measuring 
giants  with  the  impertinent  foot-rule  of  his  common 
sense.  One  does  not  like  him  the  less  for  it,  but  it 
is,  in  spite  of  all  the  disconcerting  jokes  with  which 
it  may  be  covered,  a  futile  and  ridiculous  occupation. 
Persistently  there  emerges  from  the  record  the 
impression  of  something  childish,  whether  in  petulance 
or  gaminerie^  a  crudeness  as  well  as  a  shrewdness  of 

(  judgment  and  ideal.  Where  Butler  thought  himself 
complete,  he  was  insufficient;  and  where  he  thought 
himself  insufficient,  he  was  complete.  To  himself  he 
appeared  a  hobbledehoy  by  the  side  of  Pauli;    to  us 

[  he  appears  a  hobbledehoy  by  the  side  of  Miss  Savage. 

[OCTOBER,  1 91 9. 
120 


The  Poetry  of  Mr  Hardy 

One  meets  fairly  often  with  the  critical  opinion  that 
Mr  Hardy's  poetry  is  incidental.  It  is  admitted  on 
all  sides  that  his  poetry  has  curious  merits  of  its  own, 
but  it  is  held  to  be  completely  subordinate  to  his 
novels,  and  those  who  maintain  that  it  must  be' 
considered  as  having  equal  standing  with  his  prose, 
are  not  seldom  treated  as  guilty  of  paradox  and 
preciousness. 

We  are  inclined  to  wonder,  as  we  review  the 
situation,  whether  those  of  the  contrary  persuasion 
are  not  allowing  themselves  to  be  impressed  primarily 
by  mere  bulk,  and  arguing  that  a  man's  chief  work 
must  necessarily  be  what  he  has  done  most  of;  and 
we  feel  that  some  such  supposition  is  necessary  to 
explain  what  appears  to  us  as  a  visible  reluctance  to 
allow  Mr  Hardy's  poetry  a  clean  impact  upon  the 
critical  consciousness.  It  is  true  that  we  have  ranged 
against  us  critics  of  distinction,  such  as  Mr  Lascelles 
Abercrombie  and  Mr  Robert  Lynd,  and  that  it  may 
savour  of  impertinence  to  suggest  that  the  case  could 
have  been  unconsciously  pre-judged  in  their  minds 
when  they  addressed  themselves  to  Mr  Hardy's 
poetry.  Nevertheless,  we  find  some  significance  in 
the  fact  that  both  these  critics  are  of  such  an  age  that 
when  they  came  to  years  of  discretion  the  Wessex 
Novels  were  in  existence  as  a  corpus.  There,  before 
their  eyes,  was  a  monument  of  literary  work  having 
a  unity  unlike  that  of  any  contemporary  author.  The 
poems  became  public  only  after  they  had  laid  the 

121 


Aspects  of  Literature 

foundations  of  their  judgment.  For  them  Mr  Hardy's 
work  was  done.  Whatever  he  might  subsequently 
produce  was  an  interesting,  but  to  their  criticism  an 
otiose  appendix  to  his  prose  achievement. 

It  happens  therefore  that  to  a  somewhat  younger 
critic  the  perspective  may  be  different.  By  the 
accident  of  years  it  would  appear  to  him  that  Mr 
Hardy's  poetry  was  no  less  a  corpus  than  his  prose. 
They  would  be  extended  equally  and  at  the  same 
moment  before  his  eyes;  he  would  embark  upon 
voyages  of  discovery  into  both  at  roughly  the  same 
time;  and  he  might  find,  in  total  innocence  of  precious- 
ness  and  paradox,  that  the  poetry  would  yield  up  to 
him  a  quality  of  perfume  not  less  essential  than  any 
that  he  could  extract  from  the  prose. 

This  is,  as  we  see  it,  the  case  with  ourselves.  We 
discover  all  that  our  elders  discover  in  Mr  Hardy's 
novels;  we  see  more  than  they  in  his  poetry.  To 
our  mind  it  exists  superbly  in  its  own  right;  it  is  not 
lifted  into  significance  upon  the  glorious  substructure 
of  the  novels.  They  also  are  complete  in  themselves. 
We  recognise  the  relation  between  the  achievements, 
and  discern  that  they  are  the  work  of  a  single  mind; 
but  they  are  separate  works,  having  separate  and 
unique  excellences.  The  one  is  only  approximately 
explicable  in  terms  of  the  other.  We  incline,  there- 
fore, to  attach  a  signal  importance  to  what  has  always 
seemed  to  us  the  most  important  sentence  in  Who's 
Who  ? — namely,  that  in  which  Mr  Hardy  confesses 
that  in  1868  he  was  compelled — that  is  his  own  word 
— to  give  up  writing  poetry  for  prose. 

For  Mr  Hardy's  poetic  gift  is  not  a  late  and  freakish 
flowering.  In  the  volume  into  which  has  been  gathered 
122 


The  Poetry  of  Mr  Hardy 

all  his  poetical  work  with  the  exception  of  *  The 
Dynasts,'*  are  pieces  bearing  the  date  1866  which 
display  an  astonishing  mastery,  not  merely  of  technique 
but  of  the  essential  content  of  great  poetry.  Nor  are 
such  pieces  exceptional.  Granted  that  Mr  Hardy 
has  retained  only  the  finest  of  his  early  poetry,  still 
there  are  a  dozen  poems  of  1866-7  which  belong  either 
entirely  or  in  part  to  the  category  of  major  poetry. 
Take,  for  instance,  *  Neutral  Tones  * : — 

*  We  stood  by  a  pond  that  winter  day. 

And  the  sun  was  white,  as  though  chidden  of 

God, 
And  a  few  leaves  lay  on  the  starving  sod; 
— They  had  fallen  from  an  ash,  and  were 
gray. 

*  Your  eyes  on  me  were  as  eyes  that  rove 
Over  tedious  riddles  long  ago; 

And  some  winds  played  between  us  to  and  fro 
On  which  lost  the  more  by  our  love. 

*  The  smile  on  your  mouth  was  the  deadest  thing 
Alive  enough  to  have  strength  to  die; 

And  a  grin  of  bitterness  swept  thereby 
Like  an  ominous  bird  a-wing.  .  .  . 

*  Since  then  keen  lessons  that  love  deceives 
And  wrings  with  wrong,  have  shaped  to  me 
Your  face,  and  the  God-curst  sun,  and  a  tree 

And  a  pond  edged  with  grayish  leaves.* 

1  Collected  Poems  of  Thomas  Hardy.    Vol.  I.     (Macmillan./ 

123 


Aspects  of  Literature 

That  was  written  in  1867.  The  date  of  Desperate 
Remedies,  Mr  Hardy^s  first  novel,  was  1 87 1 .  Desperate 
Remedies  may  have  been  written  some  years  before. 
It  makes  no  difference  to  the  astonishing  contrast 
between  the  immaturity  of  the  novel  and  the  maturity 
of  the  poem.  It  is  surely  impossible  in  the  face  of 
such  a  juxtaposition  then  to  deny  that  Mr  Hardy's 
poetry  exists  in  its  own  individual  right,  and  not  as  a 
curious  simulacrum  of  his  prose. 

These  early  poems  have  other  points  of  deep 
interest,  of  which  one  of  the  chief  is  in  a  sense 
technical.  One  can  trace  a  quite  definite  influence  of 
Shakespeare's  sonnets  in  his  language  and  imagery. 
The  four  sonnets,  *  She  to  Him  '  (1866),  are  full  of 
echoes,  as  : — 

*  Numb  as  a  vane  that  cankers  on  its  point 
True  to  the  wind  that  kissed  ere  canker  came.' 

or  this  from  another  sonnet  of  the  same  year  : — 

*.As  common  chests  encasing  wares  of  price 
Are  borne  with  tenderness  through  halls  of 
state.' 

Yet  no  one  reading  the  sonnets  of  these  years  can 
fail  to  mark  the  impress  of  an  individual  personality. 
The  effect  is,  at  times,  curious  and  impressive  in  the 
extreme.  We  almost  feel  that  Mr  Hardy  is  bringing 
some  physical  compulsion  to  bear  on  Shakespeare 
and  forcing  him  to  say  something  that  he  does  not 
want  to  say.  Of  course,  it  is  merely  a  curious  tweak 
of  the  fancy;  but  there  comes  to  us  in  such  lines  as 
the  following  an  insistent  vision  of  two  youths  of  an 
124 


The  Poetry  of  Mr  Hardy 

age,  the  one  masterful,  the  other  indulgent,  and 
carrying  out  his  companion's  firm  suggestion : — 

*  Remembering  mine  the  loss  is,  not  the  blame 
That  Sportsman  Time  rears  but  his  brood  to 

kill. 
Knowing  me  in  my  soul  the  very  same — 
One  who  would  die  to  spare  you  touch  of  ill ! — 
Will  you  not  grant  to  old  affection's  claim 
The  hand  of  friendship  down  Life's  sunless  hill?' 

But,  fancies  aside,  the  effect  of  these  early  poems  is 
twofold.  ..Their  attitude  is  definite: — 

*  Crass  Casualty  obstructs  the  sun  and  rain 
And  dicing  time  for  gladness  calls  a  moan  .   .   . 
These    purblind    Doomsters    had    as    readily 

thrown 
Blisses  about  my  pilgrimage  as  pain.' 

and  the  technique  has  the  mark  of  mastery,  a  com- 
plete economy  of  statement  which  produces  the 
conviction  that  the  words  are  saying  only  what  poet 
ordained  they  should  say,  neither  less  nor  more. 

The  early  years  were  followed  by  the  long  period 
of  the  novels,  in  which,  we  are  prepared  to  admit, 
poetry  was  actually  if  not  in  intention  incidental. 
It  is  the  grim  truth  that  poetry  cannot  be  written  in 
between  times;  and,  though  we  have  hardly  any 
dates  on  which  to  rely,  we  are  willing  to  believe  that 
few  of  Mr  Hardy's  characteristic  poems  were  written 
between  the  appearance  of  Desperate  Remedies  and 
his  farewell  to  the  activity  of  novel-writing  with 
The  Well'Beloved  (1897).     But  the  few  dates  which 

125 


Aspects  of  Lite?^ature 

we  have  tell  us  that  *  Thoughts  of  Phena/  the  beautiful 
poem  beginning: — 

*  Not  a  line  of  her  writing  have  I, 
Not  a  thread  of  her  hair.  .  .  .' 

which  reaches  forward  to  the  love  poems  of  1912-13, 
was  written  in  1890. 

Whether  the  development  of  Mr  Hardy's  poetry 
was  concealed  or  visible  during  the  period  of  the 
novels,  development  there  was  into  a  maturity  so 
overwhelming  that  by  its  touchstone  the  poetical 
work  of  his  famous  contemporaries  appears  singularly 
jejune  and  false.  But,  though  by  the  accident  of 
social  conditions — for  that  Mr  Hardy  waited  till 
1898  to  publish  his  first  volume  of  poems  is  more  a 
social  than  an  artistic  fact — it  is  impossible  to  follow 
out  the  phases  of  his  poetical  progress  in  the  detail  we 
would  desire,  it  is  impossible  not  to  recognise  that  the 
mature  poet,  Mr  Hardy,  is  of  the  same  poetical  sub- 
stance as  the  young  poet  of  the  'sixties.  The  attitude 
is  unchanged;  the  modifications  of  the  theme  of 
*  crass  casualty  *  leave  its  central  asseveration  unchanged. 
There  are  restatements,  enlargements  of  perspective, 
a  slow  and  forceful  expansion  of  the  personal  into  the 
universal,  but  the  truth  once  recognised  is  never 
suffered  for  a  moment  to  be  hidden  or  mollified.  Only 
a  superficial  logic  would  point,  for  instance,  to  his 

*  Wonder  if  Man's  consciousness 
^  Was  a  mistake  of  God's,' 

as  a  denial  of  *  casualty.'  To  envisage  an  accepted 
truth  from  a  new  angle,  to  turn  it  over  and  over 
126 


The  Poetry  of  Mr  Hardy 

again  in  the  mind  in  the  hope  of  finding  some  aspect 
which  might  accord  with  a  large  and  general  view  is 
the  inevitable  movement  of  any  mind  that  is  alive 
and  not  dead.  To  say  that  Mr  Hardy  has  finally 
discovered  unity  may  be  paradoxical;  but  it  is  true. 
The  harmony  of  the  artist  is  not  as  the  harmony  of 
the  preacher  or  the  philosopher.  Neither  would 
grant,  neither  would  understand  the  profound  acquies- 
cence that  lies  behind  *  Adonais  '  or  the  *  Ode  to  the 
Grecian  Urn.'  Such  acquiescence  has  no  moral 
quality,  as  morality  is  even  now  understood,  nor  any 
logical  compulsion.  It  does  not  stifle  anger  nor  deny 
anguish;  it  turns  no  smiling  face  upon  unsmiling 
things;  it  is  not  puffed  up  with  the  resonance  of  futile 
heroics.  It  accepts  the  things  that  are  as  the  necessary 
basis  of  artistic  creation.  This  unity  which  comes  of 
the  instinctive  refusal  in  the  great  poet  to  deny 
experience,  and  subdues  the  self  into  the  whole  as 
part  of  that  which  is  not  denied,  is  to  be  found  in 
every  corner  of  Mr  Hardy's  mature  poetry.  It  gives, 
as  it  alone  can  really  give,  to  personal  emotion  what 
is  called  the  impersonality  of  great  poetry.  We  feel 
it  as  a  sense  of  background,  a  conviction  that  a  given 
poem  is  not  the  record,  but  the  culmination  of  an 
experience,  and  that  the  experience  of  which  it  is  the 
culmination  is  far  larger  and  more  profound  than  the 
one  which  it  seems  to  record. 

At  the  basis  of  great  poetry  lies  an  all-embracing 
realism,  an  adequacy  to  all  experience,  a  refusal  of  the 
merely  personal  in  exultation  or  dismay.  Take  the 
contrast  between  Rupert  Brooke's  deservedly  famous 
lines:  *  There  is  some  corner  of  a  foreign  field  .  .  .' 
and  Mr  Hardy's  *  Drummer  Hodge  * : — 

127 


Aspects  of  Literature 

*  Yet  portion  of  that  unknown  plain 

Will  Hodge  for  ever  be; 
His  homely  Northern  heart  and  brain 

Grow  to  some  Southern  tree, 
And  strange-eyed  constellations  reign 

His  stars  eternally/ 

We  know  which  is  the  truer.  Which  is  the  more 
beautiful  ?  Is  it  not  Mr  Hardy  ?  And  which  (strange 
question)  is  the  more  consoling,  the  more  satisfying, 
the  more  acceptable  ?  Is  it  not  Mr  Hardy  ?  There 
is  sorrow,  but  it  is  the  sorrow  of  the  spheres.  And 
this,  not  the  apparent  anger  and  dismay  of  a  selPs 
discomfiture,  is  the  quality  of  greatness  in  Mr  Hardy's 
poetry.  The  Mr  Hardy  of  the  love  poems  of  1 9 1 2-1 3 
is  not  a  man  giving  way  to  memory  in  poetry;  he  is 
a  great  poet  uttering  the  cry  of  the  universe.  A  vast 
range  of  acknowledged  experience  returns  to  weight 
each  syllable;  it  is  the  quality  of  life  that  is  vocal, 
gathered  into  a  moment  of  time  with  a  vista  of  years: — 

*  Ignorant  of  what  there  is  flitting  here  to  see. 
The  waked  birds  preen  and  the  seals  flop 
lazily, 
Soon  you  will  have.  Dear,  to  vanish  from  me, 
For  the  stars  close  their  shutters  and  the 
Dawn  whitens  hazily. 
Trust  me,  I  mind  not,  though  Life  lours 
The  bringing  me  here;   nay,  bring  me  here 
again ! 
I  am  just  the  same  as  when 
Our  days  were  a  joy  and  our  paths  through 
flowers.'  r 

[NOVEMBER,    I9I9. 

128 


The  Poetry  of  Mr  Hardy 

We  have  read  these  poems  of  Thomas  Hardy,  read 
them  not  once,  but  many  times.  Many  of  them  have 
already  become  part  of  our  being;  their  indelible 
impress  has  given  shape  to  dumb  and  striving  elements 
in  our  soul;  they  have  set  free  and  purged  mute, 
heart-devouring  regrets.  And  yet,  though  this  is  so, 
the  reading  of  them  in  a  single  volume,  the  submission 
to  their  movement  with  a  like  unbroken  motion  of 
the  mind,  gathers  their  greatness,  their  poignancy 
and  passion,  into  one  stream,  submerging  us  and 
leaving  us  patient  and  purified. 

There  have  been  many  poets  among  us  in  the  last 
fifty  years,  poets  of  sure  talent,  and  it  may  be  even 
of  genius,  but  no  other  of  them  has  this  compulsive 
power.  The  secret  is  not  hard  to  find.  Not  one  of 
them  is  adequate  to  what  we  know  and  have  suffered. 
We  have  in  our  own  hearts  a  new  touchstone  of  poetic 
greatness.  We  have  learned  too  much  to  be  wholly 
responsive  to  less  than  an  adamantine  honesty  of  soul 
and  a  complete  acknowledgment  of  experience.  *  Give 
us  the  whole,*  we  cry,  *  give  us  the  truth.*  Unless 
we  can  catch  the  undertone  of  this  acknowledgment, 
a  poet's  voice  is  in  our  ears  hardly  more  than  sounding 
brass  or  a  tinkling  cymbal. 

Therefore  we  turn — some  by  instinct  and  some 
by  deliberate  choice — to  the  greatest;  therefore  we 
deliberately  set  Mr  Hardy  among  these.  What 
they  have,  he  has,  and  has  in  their  degree — a  plenary 
vision  of  life.  He  is  the  master  of  the  fundamental 
theme;  it  enters  into,  echoes  in,  modulates  and 
modifies  all  his  particular  emotions,  and  the  individual 
poems  of  which  they  are  the  substance.  Each  work 
of  his  is  a  fragment  of  a  whole — not  a  detached  and 

129 


Aspects  of  Literature 

arbitrarily  severed  fragment,  but  a  unity  which 
implies,  calls  for  and  in  a  profound  sense  creates 
a  vaster  and  completely  comprehensive  whole. 
His  reaction  to  an  episode  has  behind  and  within 
it  a  reaction  to  the  universe.  An  overwhelming 
endorsement  descends  upon  his  words:  he  traces 
them  as  with  a  pencil,  and  straightway  they  are 
graven  in  stone. 

Thus  his  short  poems  have  a  weight  and  validity 
which  sets  them  apart  in  kind  from  even  the  very 
finest  work  of  his  contemporaries.  These  may  be 
perfect  in  and  for  themselves;  but  a  short  poem  by 
Mr  Hardy  is  often  perfect  in  a  higher  sense.  As 
the  lines  of  a  diagram  may  be  produced  in  imagination 
to  contain  within  themselves  all  space,  one  of  Mr 
Hardy's  most  characteristic  poems  may  expand  and 
embrace  all  human  experience.  In  it  we  may  hear 
the  sombre,  ruthless  rhythm  of  life  itself — the 
dominant  theme  that  gives  individuation  to  the  ripple 
of  fragmentary  joys  and  sorrows.  Take  *  The  Broken 
Appointment ' : — 

*  You  did  not  come, 
And  marching  Time  drew  on,  and  wore  me 

numb. — 
Yet  less  for  loss  of  your  dear  presence  there 
Than    that    I    thus    found    lacking    in    your 

make 
That  high  compassion  which  can  overbear 
Reluctance  for  pure  lovingkindness'  sake 
Grieved  I,  when,  as  the  hope-hour  stroked  its 
sum. 
You  did  not  come. 
130 


The  Poetry  of  Mr  Hardy 

*  You  love  not  me, 
And  love  alone  can  lend  you  loyalty 
— I  know  and  knew  it.    But,  unto  the  store 
Of  human  deeds  divine  in  all  but  name. 
Was  it  not  worth  a  little  hour  or  more 
To  add  yet  this:   Once  you,  a  woman,  came 
To  soothe  a  time-torn  man ;  even  though  it  be 

You  love  not  me  ?  * 

On  such  a  seeming  fragment  of  personal  experience 
lies  the  visible  endorsement  of  the  universe.  The 
hopes  not  of  a  lover  but  of  humanity  are  crushed 
beneath  its  rhythm.  The  ruthlessness  of  the  event  is 
intensified  in  the  motion  of  the  poem  till  one  can 
hear  the  even  pad  of  destiny;  and  a  moment  comes 
when  to  a  sense  made  eager  by  the  strain  of  intense 
attention  it  seems  to  have  been  written  by  the  destiny 
it  records. 

What  is  the  secret  of  poetic  power  like  this  ?  We 
do  not  look  for  it  in  technique,  though  the  technique 
of  this  poem  is  masterly.  But  the  technique  of  *  as 
the  hope-hour  stroked  its  sum  *  is  of  such  a  kind 
that  we  know  as  we  read  that  it  proceeds  from  a 
sheer  compulsive  force.  For  a  moment  it  startles; 
a  moment  more  and  the  echo  of  those  very  words 
is  reverberant  with  accumulated  purpose.  They  are 
pitiless  as  the  poem;  the  sign  of  an  ultimate  obedience 
is.  upon  them.  Whence  came  the  power  that  com- 
pelled it  }  Can  the  source  be  defined  or  indicated  } 
We  believe  it  can  be  indicated,  though  not  defined. 
We  can  show  where  to  look  for  the  mystery,  that  in 
spite  of  our  regard  remains  a  mystery  still.  We  are 
persuaded  that  almost  on  the  instant  that  it  was  felt 

131 


Aspects  of  Literature 

the  original  emotion  of  the  poem  was  endorsed. 
Perhaps  it  came  to  the  poet  as  the  pain  of  a  particular 
and  personal  experience;  but  in  a  little  or  a  long  while 
— creative  time  is  not  measured  by  days  or  years — 
it  became,  for  him,  a  part  of  the  texture  of  the  general 
life.  It  became  a  manifestation  of  life,  almost,  nay 
wholly,  in  the  sacramental  sense,  a  veritable  epiphany. 
The  manifold  and  inexhaustible  quality  of  life  was 
focused  into  a  single  revelation.  A  critic's  words 
do  not  lend  themselves  to  the  necessary  precision. 
We  should  need  to  write  with  exactly  the  same  power 
as  Mr  Hardy  when  he  wrote  *  the  hope-hour  stroked 
its  sum,'  to  make  our  meaning  likewise  inevitable. 
The  word  *  revelation  '  is  fertile  in  false  suggestion ; 
the  creative  act  of  power  which  we  seek  to  elucidate 
is  an  act  of  plenary  apprehension,  by  which  one 
manifestation,  one  form  of  life,  one  experience  is 
seen  in  its  rigorous  relation  to  all  other  and  to  all 
possible  manifestations,  forms,  and  experiences.  It 
is,  we  believe,  the  act  which  Mr  Hardy  himself  has 
tried  to  formulate  in  the  phrase  which  is  the  title  of 
one  of  his  books  of  poems — Moments  of  Vision, 

Only  those  who  do  not  read  Mr  Hardy  could 
make  the  mistake  of  supposing  that  on  his  lips  such 
a  phrase  had  a  mystical  implication.  Between  belief 
and  logic  lies  a  third  kingdom,  which  the  mystics  and 
the  philosophers  alike  are  too  eager  to  forget — the 
kingdom  of  art,  no  less  the  residence  of  truth  than 
the  two  other  realms,  and  to  some,  perhaps,  more 
authentic  even  than  they.  Therefore  when  we  expand 
the  word  *  vision  *  in  the  phrase  to  *  aesthetic  vision  * 
we  mean,  not  the  perception  of  beauty,  at  least  in  the 
ordinary  sense  of  that  ill-used  word,  but  the 
132 


The  Poetry  of  Mr  Hardy 

apprehension  of  truth,  the  recognition  of  a  complete 
system  of  valid  relations  incapable  of  logical  state- 
ment. Such  are  the  acts  of  unique  apprehension 
which  Mr  Hardy,  we  believe,  implied  by  his  title. 
In  a  *  moment  of  vision  '  the  poet  recognises  in  a 
single  separate  incident  of  life,  life's  essential  quality. 
The  uniqueness  of  the  whole,  the  infinite  multiplicity 
and  variety  of  its  elements,  are  manifested  and  appre- 
hended in  a  part.  Since  we  are  here  at  work  on  the 
confines  of  intelligible  statement,  it  is  better,  even 
at  the  cost  of  brutalising  a  poem,  to  choose  an  example 
from  the  book  that  bears  the  mysterious  name.  The 
verses  that  follow  come  from  *  Near  Lanivet,  1872.' 
We  choose  them  as  an  example  of  Mr  Hardy *s 
method  at  less  than  its  best,  at  a  point  at  which  the 
scaffolding  of  his  process  is  just  visible. 

*  There  was  a  stunted  hand-post  just  on  the  crest, 

Only  a  few  feet  high : 
She  was  tired,  and  we  stopped  in  the  twilight- 
time  for  her  rest, 
At  the  crossways  close  thereby. 

*  She  leant  back,  being  so  weary,  against  its  stem. 

And  laid  her  arms  on  its  own. 
Each  open  palm  stretched  out  to  each  end  of 
them. 
Her  sad  face  sideways  thrown. 

*  Her  white-clothed  form  at  this  dim-lit  cease  of  day 

Made  her  look  as  one  crucified 
In  my  gaze  at  her  from  the  midst  of  the  dusty  way. 
And  hurriedly  "  Don't,"  I  cried. 


Aspects  of  Literature 

*  I  do  not  think  she  heard.     Loosing  thence  she 

said, 
As  she  stepped  forth  ready  to  go, 
**  I  am  rested  now. — Something  strange  came 

into  my  head; 
I  wish  I  had  not  leant  so  I  '  •  .  . 

*  And  we  dragged  on  and  on,  while  we  seemed 

to  see 
In  the  running  of  Time's  far  glass 
Her  crucified,  as  she  had  wondered  if  she  might 

be 
Some  day. — Alas,  alas!  * 

Superstition  and  symbolism,  some  may  say;  but 
they  mistakenly  invert  the  order  of  the  creative 
process.  The  poet*s  act  of  apprehension  is  wholly 
different  from  the  lover's  fear;  and  of  this  apprehension 
the  chance-shaped  crucifix  is  the  symbol  and  not  the 
cause.  The  concentration  of  life's  vicissitude  upon 
that  white-clothed  form  was  first  recognised  by  a 
sovereign  act  of  aesthetic  understanding  or  intuition; 
the  seeming  crucifix  supplied  a  scaffolding  for  its 
expression ;  it  afforded  a  clue  to  the  method  of  trans- 
position into  words  which  might  convey  the  truth 
thus  apprehended;  it  suggested  an  equivalence.  The 
distinction  may  appear  to  be  hair-drawn,  but  we 
believe  that  it  is  vital  to  the  theory  of  poetry  as  a 
whole,  and  to  an  understanding  of  Mr  Hardy's  poetry 
in  particular.  Indeed,  in  it  must  be  sought  the 
meaning  of  another  of  his  titles,  *  Satires  of  Circum- 
stance,' where  the  particular  circumstance  is  neither 
typical  nor  fortuitous,  but  a  symbol  necessary  to 
134 


The  Poetry  of  Mr  Hardy 

communicate  to  others  the  sense  of  a  quality  in  life 
more  largely  and  variously  apprehended  by  the  poet. 

At  the  risk  of  appearing  fantastic  we  will  endeavour 
still  further  to  elucidate  our  meaning.  The  poetic 
process  is,  we  believe,  twofold.  The  one  part,  the 
discovery  of  the  symbol,  the  establishment  of  an 
equivalence,  is  what  we  may  call  poetic  method.  It 
is  concerned  with  the  transposition  and  communica- 
tion of  emotion,  no  matter  what  the  emotion  may  be, 
for  to  poetic  method  the  emotional  material  is,  strictly, 
indifferent.  The  other  part  is  an  aesthetic  apprehension 
of  significance,  the  recognition  of  the  all  in  the  one. 
This  is  a  specifically  poetic  act,  or  rather  the  supreme 
poetic  act.  Yet  it  may  be  absent  from  poetry.  For 
there  is  no  necessary  connection  between  poetic 
apprehension  and  poetic  method.  Poetic  method 
frequently  exists  without  poetic  apprehension;  and 
there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  reverse  is  not 
also  true,  for  the  recognition  of  greatness  in  poetry 
is  probably  not  the  peculiar  privilege  of  great  poets. 
We  have  here,  at  least  a  principle  of  division  between 
major  and  minor  poetry. 

Mr  Hardy  is  a  major  poet;  and  we  are  impelled 
to  seek  further  and  ask  what  it  is  that  enables  such 
a  poet  to  perform  this  sovereign  act  of  apprehension 
and  to  recognise  the  quality  of  the  all  in  the  quality 
of  the  one.  We  believe  that  the  answer  is  simple. 
The  great  poet  knows  what  he  is  looking  for.  Once 
more  we  speak  too  precisely,  and  so  falsely,  being 
compelled  to  use  the  language  of  the  kingdom  of 
logic  to  describe  what  is  being  done  in  the  kingdom 
of  art.  The  poet,  we  say,  knows  the  quality  for 
which   he   seeks;     but    this    knowledge    is    rather   a 

A.L.  K  135 


Aspects  of  Literature 

condition  than  a  possession  of  soul.  It  is  a  state  of 
responsiveness  rather  than  a  knowledge  of  that  to 
which  he  will  respond.  But  it  is  knowledge  inasmuch 
as  the  choice  of  that  to  which  he  will  respond  is 
determined  by  the  condition  of  his  soul.  On  the 
purity  of  that  condition  depends  his  greatness  as  a 
poet,  and  that  purity  in  its  turn  depends  upon  his 
denying  no  element  of  his  profound  experience.  If 
he  denies  or  forgets,  the  synthesis — again  the  word  is 
a  metaphor — which  must  establish  itself  within  him 
is  fragmentary  and  false.  The  new  event  can  wake 
but  partial  echoes  in  his  soul  or  none  at  all;  it  can 
neither  be  received  into,  nor  can  it  create  a  complete 
relation,  and  so  it  passes  incommensurable  from  limbo 
into  forgetfulness. 

Mr  Hardy  stands  high  above  all  other  modern 
poets  by  the  deliberate  purity  of  his  responsiveness. 
The  contagion  of  the  world^s  slow  stain  has  not 
touched  him;  from  the  first  he  held  aloof  from  the 
general  conspiracy  to  forget  in  which  not  only  those 
who  are  professional  optimists  take  a  part.  Therefore 
his  simplest  words  have  a  vehemence  and  strangeness 
of  their  own : — 

*  It  will  have  been : 
Nor  God  nor  Demon  can  undo  the  done, 

Unsight  the  seen 
Make  muted  music  be  as  unbegun 

Though  things  terrene 
Groan  in  their  bondage  till  oblivion  supervene.' 

What  neither  God  nor  Demon  can  do,  men  are 
incessantly  at  work  to  accomplish.    Life  itself  rewards 

136 


The  Poetry  of  Mr  Hardy 

them  for  their  assiduity,  for  she  scatters  her  roses 
chiefly  on  the  paths  of  those  who  forget  her  thorns. 
But  the  great  poet  remembers  both  rose  and  thorn; 
and  it  is  beyond  his  power  to  remember  them  other- 
wise than  together. 

It  was  fitting,  then,  and  to  some  senses  inevitable, 
that  Mr  Hardy  should  have  crowned  his  work  as  a 
poet  in  his  old  age  by  a  series  of  love  poems  that  are 
unique  for  power  and  passion  in  even  the  English 
language.  This  late  and  wonderful  flowering  has  no 
tinge  of  miracle;  it  has  sprung  straight  from  the 
main  stem  of  Mr  Hardy's  poetic  growth.  Into 
*  Veteris  Vestigia  Flammae '  is  distilled  the  quint- 
essence of  the  power  that  created  the  Wessex  Novels 
and  *  The  Dynasts  ' ;  all  that  Mr  Hardy  has  to  tell 
us  of  life,  the  whole  of  the  truth  that  he  has  appre- 
hended, is  in  these  poems,  and  no  poet  since  poetry 
began  has  apprehended  or  told  us  more.  Sunt 
lacrima  rerum,  [november,  191 9. 


Postscript 

Three  months  after  this  essay  was  written  the 
first  volume  of  the  long  awaited  definitive  edition  of 
Mr  Hardy's  works  (the  Mellstock  Edition)  appeared. 
It  was  with  no  common  thrill  that  we  read  in  the 
precious  pages  of  introduction  the  following  words 
confirming  the  theory  upon  which  the  first  part  of 
the  essay  is  largely  based. 

*  Turning  now  to  my  verse — to  myself  the  more 
individual  part  of  my  literary  fruitage — I  would  say 

137 

1 


Aspects  of  Literature 

that,  unlike  some  of  the  fiction,  nothing  interfered 
with  the  writer*s  freedom  in  respect  of  its  form  or 
content.  Several  of  the  poems — indeed  many — were 
produced  before  novel-writing  had  been  thought  of 
as  a  pursuit;  but  few  saw  the  light  till  all  the  novels 
had  been  published.   ... 

*  The  few  volumes  filled  by  the  verse  cover  a 
producing  period  of  some  eighteen  years  first  and 
last,  while  the  seventeen  or  more  volumes  of  novels 
represent  correspondingly  about  four-and-twenty 
years.  One  is  reminded  by  this  disproportion  in 
time  and  result  how  much  more  concise  and  quint- 
essential expression  becomes  when  given  in  rhythmic 
form  than  when  shaped  in  the  language  of  prose.* 


138 


Present  Condition  of  Rnglish  Poetry 

Shall  we,  or  shall  we  not,  be  serious  ?  To  be  serious 
nowadays  is  to  be  ill-mannered,  and  what,  murmurs 
the  cynic,  does  it  matter  ?  We  have  our  opinion ;  we 
know  that  there  is  a  good  deal  of  good  poetry  in  the 
Georgian  book,  a  little  in  Wheels}  We  know  that 
there  is  much  bad  poetry  in  the  Georgian  book,  and 
less  in  Wheels,  We  know  that  there  is  one  poem  in 
Wheels  beside  the  intense  and  sombre  imagination 
of  which  even  the  good  poetry  of  the  Georgian  book 
pales  for  a  moment.  We  think  we  know  more  than 
this.  What  does  it  matter  ?  Pick  out  the  good  things, 
and  let  the  rest  go. 

And  yet,  somehow,  this  question  of  modern 
English  poetry  has  become  important  for  us,  as  im- 
portant as  the  war,  important  in  the  same  way  as 
the  war.  We  can  even  analogise.  Georgian  Poetry 
is  like  the  Coalition  Government;  Wheels  is  like  the 
Radical  opposition.  Out  of  the  one  there  issues  an 
indefinable  odour  of  complacent  sanctity,  an  unctuous 
redolence  of  union  sacree\  out  of  the  other,  some 
acidulation  of  perversity.  In  the  coalition  poets  we 
find  the  larger  number  of  good  men,  and  the  larger 
number  of  bad  ones;  in  the  opposition  poets  we  find 
no  bad  ones  with  the  coalition  badness,  no  good  ones 
with  the  coalition  goodness,  but  in  a  single  case  a 
touch    of    the    apocalyptic,    intransigent,    passionate 

^Georgian   Poetry,    1918-1919.      Edited   by   E.    M.      (The   Poetry 
Bookshop.) 

Wheels.     Fourth  Cycle.     (Oxford  :   B.  H.  BlackwelL) 


Aspects  of  Literature 

honesty  that  is  the  mark  of  the  martyr  of  art  or 
life. 

On  both  sides  we  have  the  corporate  and  the 
individual  flavour;  on  both  sides  we  have  those 
individuals-by-courtesy  whose  flavour  is  almost  wholly 
corporate;  on  both  sides  the  corporate  flavour  is  one 
that  we  find  intensely  disagreeable.  In  the  coalition 
we  find  it  noxious,  in  the  opposition  no  worse  than 
irritating.  No  doubt  this  is  because  we  recognise  a 
tendency  to  take  the  coalition  seriously,  while  the 
opposition  is  held  to  be  ridiculous.  But  both  the 
coalition  and  the  opposition — we  use  both  terms  in 
their  corporate  sense — are  unmistakably  the  product  of 
the  present  age.  In  that  sense  they  are  truly  repre- 
sentative and  complementary  each  to  the  other;  they 
are  a  fair  sample  of  the  goodness  and  badness  of  the 
literary  epoch  in  which  we  live;  they  are  still  more 
remarkable  as  an  index  of  the  complete  confusion  of 
aesthetic  values  that  prevails  to-day. 

The  corporate  flavour  of  the  coalition  is  a  false 
simplicity.  Of  the  nineteen  poets  who  compose  it 
there  are  certain  individuals  whom  we  except  absolutely 
from  this  condemnation,  Mr  de  la  Mare,  Mr  Davies, 
and  Mr  Lawrence;  there  are  others  who  are  more  or 
less  exempt  from  it,  Mr  Abercrombie,  Mr  Sassoon, 
Mrs  Shove,  and  Mr  Nichols;  and  among  the 
rest  there  are  varying  degrees  of  saturation.  This 
false  simplicity  can  be  quite  subtle.  It  is  compounded 
of  worship  of  trees  and  birds  and  contemporary  poets 
in  about  equal  proportions;  it  is  sicklied  over  at 
times  with  a  quite  perceptible  varnish  of  modernity, 
and  at  other  times  with  what  looks  to  be  technical 
skill,  but  generally  proves  to  be  a  fairly  clumsy 
140 


Present  Conditio7i  of  English  Poetry 

reminiscence  of  somebody  else's  technical  skill.  The 
negative  qualities  of  this  simplesse  are,  however,  the 
most  obvious;  the  poems  imbued  with  it  are  devoid 
of  any  emotional  significance  whatever.  If  they  have 
an  idea  it  leaves  you  with  the  queer  feeling  that  it  is 
not  an  idea  at  all,  that  it  has  been  defaced,  worn 
smooth  by  the  rippling  of  innumerable  minds.  Then, 
spread  in  a  luminous  haze  over  these  compounded 
elements,  is  a  fundamental  right-mindedness;  you 
feel,  somehow,  that  they  might  have  been  very 
wicked,  and  yet  they  are  very  good.  There  is  nothing 
disturbing  about  them;  Us  peuvent  etre  mis  dans 
toutes  les  mains;  they  are  kind,  generous,  even  noble. 
They  sympathise  with  animate  and  inanimate  nature. 
They  have  shining  foreheads  with  big  bumps  of 
benevolence,  like  Flora  Casby's  father,  and  one 
inclines  to  believe  that  their  eyes  must  be  frequently 
filmed  with  an  honest  tear,  if  only  because  their  vision 
is  blurred.  They  are  fond  of  lists  of  names  which 
never  suggest  things;  they  are  sparing  of  similes. 
If  they  use  them  they  are  careful  to  see  they  are  not 
too  definite,  for  a  definite  simile  makes  havoc  of  their 
constructions,  by  applying  to  them  a  certain  test  of 
reality. 

But  it  is  impossible  to  be  serious  about  them. 
The  more  stupid  of  them  supply  the  matter  for  a  good 
laugh ;  the  more  clever  the  stuff  of  a  more  recondite 
amazement.  What  is  one  to  do  when  Mr  Monro 
apostrophises  the  force  of  Gravity  in  such  words  as 
these  ? — 

*  By  leave  of  you  man  places  stone  on  stone; 
He  scatters  seed :  you  are  at  once  the  prop 

141 


Aspects  of  Literature 

Among  the  long  roots  of  his  fragile  crop 
You  manufacture  for  him,  and  insure 
House,  harvest,  implement,  and  furniture, 
And  hold  them  all  secure.' 

We  are  not  surprised  to  learn  further  that 

*  I  rest  my  body  on  your  grass, 
And  let  my  brain  repose  in  you/ 

All  that  remains  to  be  said  is  that  Mr  Monro  is  fond 
of  dogs  (*  Can  you  smell  the  rose  ?  *  he  says  to 
Dog:  *  ah,  no!  ')  and  inclined  to  fish — both  of  which 
are  Georgian  inclinations. 

Then  there  is  Mr  Drinkwater  with  the  enthusiasm 
of  the  just  man  for  moonlit  apples — *  moon-washed 
apples  of  wonder  * — and  the  righteous  man's  sense 
of  robust  rhythm  in  this  chorus  from  *  Lincoln  * : — 

*  You  who  know  the  tenderness 
Of  old  men  at  eve-tide. 

Coming  from  the  hedgerows, 
Coming  from  the  plough, 

And  the  wandering  caress 
Of  winds  upon  the  woodside, 

When  the  crying  yaffle  goes 
Underneath  the  bough.* 

Mr  Drinkwater,  though  he  cannot  write  good  doggerel, 
is  a  very  good  man.  In  this  poem  he  refers  to  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  as  *  the  words  of  light  From 
the  mountain-way.* 

Mr  Squire,  who  is  an  infinitely  more  able  writer, 
142 


Prese7tt  Condition  of  F.7iglish  Poetry 

would  make  an  excellent  subject  for  a  critical  investi- 
gation into  false  simplicity.  He  would  repay  a  very 
close  analysis,  for  he  may  deceive  the  elect  in  the  same 
way  as,  we  suppose,  he  deceives  himself.  His  poem 
*  Rivers  *  seems  to  us  a  very  curious  example  of  the 
jaux  bon.  Not  only  is  the  idea  derivative,  but  the 
rhythmical  treatment  also.    Here  is  Mr  de  la  Mare: — 

*  Sweet  is  the  music  of  Arabia 
In  my  heart,  when  out  of  dreams 
I  still  in  the  thin  clear  murk  of  dawn 
Descry  her  gliding  streams; 
Hear  her  strange  lutes  on  the  green  banks 
Ring  loud  with  the  grief  and  delight 
Of  the  dim-silked,  dark-haired  musicians 
In  the  brooding  silence  of  night. 
They  haunt  me — her  lutes  and  her  forests; 
No  beauty  on  earth  I  see 
But  shadowed  with  that  dream  recalls 
Her  loveliness  to  me: 
Still  eyes  look  coldly  upon  me. 
Cold  voices  whisper  and  say — 
**  He  is  crazed  with  the  spell  of  far  Arabia, 
They  have  stolen  his  wits  away."  ' 

And  here  is  a  verse  from  Mr  Squire: — 

*  For  whatever  stream  I  stand  by, 
And  whatever  river  I  dream  of. 
There  is  something  still  in  the  back  of  my 
mind 
From  very  far  away; 

143 


Aspects  of  Literature 

There  is  something  I  saw  and  see  not, 
A  country  full  of  rivers 
That  stirs  in  my  heart  and  speaks  to  me 
More  sure,  more  dear  than  they. 

*  And  always  I  ask  and  wonder 
(Though  often  I  do  not  know  it) 

Why  does  this  water  not  smell  like  water  ?  .  .  .* 

To  leave  the  question  of  reminiscence  aside,  how  the 
delicate  vision  of  Mr  de  la  Mare  has  been  coarsened, 
how  commonplace  his  exquisite  technique  has 
become  in  the  hands  of  even  a  first-rate  ability! 
It  remains  to  be  added  that  Mr  Squire  is  an  amateur 
of  nature, — 

*  And  skimming,  fork-tailed  in  the  evening  air, 
When   man  first  was  were  not  the  martens 

there  ?  ' — 

and  a  lover  of  dogs. 

Mr  Shanks,  Mr  W.  J.  Turner,  and  Mr  Freeman 
belong  to  the  same  order.  They  have  considerable 
technical  accomplishment  of  the  straightforward  kind 
— and  no  emotional  content.  One  can  find  examples 
of  the  disastrous  simile  in  them  all.  They  are  all  in 
their  degree  pseudo-naives.  Mr  Turner  wonders  in 
this  way: — 

*  It  is  strange  that  a  little  mud 

Should  echo  with  sounds,  syllables,  and  letters. 
Should  rise  up  and  call  a  mountain  Popocatapetl, 
And  a  green-leafed  wood  Oleander.* 
144 


\  Present  Condition  of  English  Poetry 

Of  course  Mr  Turner  does  not  really  wonder;  those 
four  lines  are  proof  positive  of  that.  But  what  matters 
is  not  so  much  the  intrinsic  value  of  the  gift  as  the 
kindly  thought  which  prompted  the  giver.  Mr 
Shanks*s  speciality  is  beauty.  He  also  is  an  amateur 
of  nature.  He  bids  us:  *  Hear  the  loud  night-jar 
spin  his  pleasant  note.'  Of  course,  Mr  Shanks  cannot 
have  heard  a  real  night-jar.  His  description  is  proof 
of  that.  But  again,  it  was  a  kindly  thought.  Mr 
Freeman  is,  like  Mr  Squire,  a  more  interesting  case, 
deserving  detailed  analysis.  For  the  moment  we  can 
only  recommend  a  comparison  of  his  first  and  second 
poems  in  this  book  with  *  Sabrina  Fair  *  and  *  Love 
in  a  Valley  '  respectively. 

It  is  only  when  we  are  confronted  with  the  strange 
blend  of  technical  skill  and  an  emotional  void  that 
we  begin  to  hunt  for  reminiscences.  Reminiscences 
are  no  danger  to  the  real  poet.  He  is  the  splendid 
borrower  who  lends  a  new  significance  to  that  which 
he  takes.  He  incorporates  his  borrowing  in  the  new 
thing  which  he  creates;  it  has  its  being  there  and 
there  alone.  One  can  see  the  process  in  the  one  fine 
poem  in  Wheels^  Mr  Wilfred  Owen's  *  Strange 
Meeting  ' : — 

*  It  seemed  that  out  of  the  battle  I  escaped 
Down  some  profound  dull  tunnel,  long  since 

scooped 
Through   granites    which    Titanic   wars   had 

groined. 
Yet  also  there  encumbered  sleepers  groaned, 
Too    fast    in    thought    or   death    to    be    be- 
stirred. 

145 


Aspects  of  Literature 

Then,  as  I  probed  them,  one  sprang  up,  and 

stared 
With  piteous  recognition  in  fixed  eyes. 
Lifting  distressful  hands  as  if  to  bless. 
And  by  his  smile,  I  knew  that  sullen  hall. 
With  a  thousand  fears  that  vision  *s  face  was 

grained ; 
Yet  no  blood  reached  there  from  the  upper 

ground, 
And  no  guns  thumped,  or  down  the  flues  made 

moan. 
"Strange,  friend,"  I  said,  **  Here  is  no  cause 

to  mourn." 
**  None,"  said  the  other,  "  save  the  undone 

years. 
The  hopelessness.    Whatever  hope  is  yours. 
Was  my  life  also  .  .  ."  ' 

The  poem  which  begins  with  these  lines  is,  we  believe, 
the  finest  in  these  two  books,  both  in  intention  and 
achievement.  Yet  no  one  can  mistake  its  source.  It 
comes,  almost  bodily,  from  the  revised  Induction  to 
*  Hyperion.*  The  sombre  imagination,  the  sombre 
rhythm  is  that  of  the  dying  Keats;  the  creative 
impulse  is  that  of  Keats. 

*  None   can   usurp   this   height,    returned   that 
shade. 
But  those  to  whom  the  miseries  of  the  world 
Are  misery,  and  will  not  let  them  rest.' 

That  is  true,  word  by  word,  and  line  by  line,  of 
Wilfred  Owen's  *  Strange  Meeting.*  It  touches 
146 


Present  Conditio?t  of  English  Poetry 

great  poetry  by  more  than  the  fringe;  even  in  its 
technique  there  is  the  hand  of  the  master  to  be. 
Those  monosyllabic  assonances  are  the  discovery  of 
genius.  We  are  persuaded  that  this  poem  by  a  boy 
like  his  great  forerunner,  who  had  the  certainty  of 
death  in  his  heart,  is  the  most  magnificent  expression 
of  the  emotional  significance  of  the  war  that  has  yet 
been  achieved  by  English  poetry.  By  including  it 
in  his  book,  the  editor  of  Wheels  has  done  a  great 
service  to  English  letters. 

Extravagant  words,  it  may  be  thought.    We  appeal 
to  the  documents.     Read   Georgian  Poetry  and  read 

*  Strange  Meeting.'  Compare  Wilfred  Owen's  poem 
with  the  very  finest  things  in  the  Georgian  book — 
Mr  Davies's  *  Lovely  Dames,'  or  Mr  de  la  Mare's 

*  The  Tryst,'  or  *  Fare  Well,'  or  the  twenty  opening 
lines  of  Mr  Abercrombie's  disappointing  poem. 
You  will  not  find  those  beautiful  poems  less  beautiful 
than  they  are;  but  you  will  find  m  *  Strange  Meeting  ' 
an  awe,  an  immensity,  an  adequacy  to  that  which  has 
been  most  profound  in  the  experience  of  a  generation. 
You  will,  finally,  have  the  standard  that  has  been 
lost,  and  the  losing  of  which  makes  the  confusion  of 
a  book  like  Georgian  Poetry  possible,  restored  to  you. 
You  will  remember  three  forgotten  things — that  poetry 
is  rooted  in  emotion,  and  that  it  grows  by  the  mastery 
of  emotion,  and  that  its  significance  finally  depends 
upon  the  quality  and  comprehensiveness  of  the 
emotion.  You  will  recognise  that  the  tricks  of  the 
trade  have  never  been  and  never  will  be  discovered 
by  which  ability  can  conjure  emptiness  into  meaning. 

It  seems  hardly  worth  while  to  return  to  Wheels, 
Once  the  argument  has  been  pitched  on  the  plane  of 

147 


Aspects  of  Literature 

*  Strange  Meeting,'  the  rest  of  the  contents  of  the 
book  become  irrelevant.  But  for  the  sake  of  symmetry 
we  will  characterise  the  corporate  flavour  of  the 
opposition  as  false  sophistication.  There  are  the 
same  contemporary  reminiscences.  Compare  Mr 
Osbert  Sitwell's  English  Gothic  with  Mr  T.  S.  Eliot's 
Sweeney  \  and  you  will  detect  a  simple  mind  persuading 
itself  that  it  has  to  deal  with  the  emotions  of  a  complex 
one.  The  spectacle  is  almost  as  amusing  as  that  of 
the  similar  process  in  the  Georgian  book.  Neverthe- 
less, in  general,  the  affected  sophistication  here  is,  as 
we  have  said,  merely  irritating;  while  the  affected 
simplicity  of  the  coalition  is  positively  noxious.  Miss 
Edith  Sitwell's  deliberate  painted  toys  are  a  great 
deal  better  than  painted  canvas  trees  and  fields, 
masquerading  as  real  ones.  In  the  poems  of  Miss  Iris 
Tree  a  perplexed  emotion  manages  to  make  its  way 
through  a  chaotic  technique.  She  represents  the 
solid  impulse  which  lies  behind  the  opposition  in 
general.  This  impulse  she  describes,  though  she  is 
very,  very  far  from  making  poetry  of  it,  in  these  not 
uninteresting  verses: — 

*  But  since  we  are  mere  children  of  this  age, 
And  must  in  curious  ways  discover  salvation 
I  will  not  quit  my  muddled  generation, 
But  ever  plead  for  Beauty  in  this  rage. 

*  Although  I  know  that  Nature's  bounty  yields 
Unto  simplicity  a  beautiful  content. 
Only  when  battle  breaks  me  and  my  strength  is- 

spent 
Will  I  give  back  my  body  to  the  fields.' 
148 


Present  Condition  of  English  Poetry 

There  is  the  opposition.  Against  the  righteous  man, 
the  mauvais  sujei.  We  sympathise  with  the  mauvais 
sujet.  If  he  is  persistent  and  laborious  enough,  he 
may  achieve  poetry.  But  he  must  travel  alone.  In 
order  to  be  loyal  to  your  age  you  must  make  up  your 
mind  what  your  age  is.  To  be  muddled  yourself  is 
not  loyalty,  but  treachery,  even  to  a  muddled 
generation.  [december,  191 9. 


149 


The  Nostalgia  of  Mr  Masefie/d 

Mr  Masefield  is  gradually  finding  his  way  to  his 
self-appointed  end,  which  is  the  glorification  of 
England  in  narrative  verse.  Reynard  the  Fox  marks, 
we  believe,  the  end  of  a  stage  in  his  progress  to  this 
goal.  He  has  reached  a  point  at  which  his  mannerisms 
have  been  so  subdued  that  they  no  longer  sensibly 
impede  the  movement  of  his  verse,  a  point  at  which 
we  may  begin  to  speak  (though  not  too  loud)  of  mastery. 
We  feel  that  he  now  approaches  what  he  desires  to 
do  with  some  certainty  of  doing  it,  so  that  we  in  our 
turn  can  approach  some  other  questions  with  some 
hope  of  answering  them. 

The  questions  are  various;  but  they  radiate  from 
and  enter  again  into  the  old  question  whether  what 
he  is  doing,  and  beginning  to  do  well,  is  worth  while 
doing,  or  rather  whether  it  will  have  been  worth 
while  doing  fifty  years  hence.  For  we  have  no  doubt 
at  all  in  our  mind  that,  in  comparison  with  the  bulk 
of  contemporary  poetry,  such  work  as  Reynard  the 
Fox  is  valuable.  We  may  use  the  old  rough  distinction 
and  ask  first  whether  Reynard  the  Fox  is  durable  in 
virtue  of  its  substance,  and  second,  whether  it  is 
durable  in  virtue  of  its  form. 

The  glorification  of  England!  There  are  some 
who  would  give  their  souls  to  be  able  to  glorify  her 
as  she  has  been  glorified,  by  Shakespeare,  by  Milton, 
by  Wordsworth,  and  by  Hardy.  For  an  Englishman 
there  is  no  richer  inspiration,  no  finer  theme;  to  have 
one's  speech  and  thought  saturated  by  the  fragrance 
150 


The  Nostalgia  of  Mr  Masefie/d 

of  this  lovely  and  pleasant  land  was  once  the  birthright 
of  English  poets  and  novelists.  But  something  has 
crept  between  us  and  it,  dividing.  Instead  of  an 
instinctive  love,  there  is  a  conscious  desire  of  England; 
instead  of  slow  saturation,  a  desperate  plunge  into  its 
mystery.  The  fragrance  does  not  come  at  its  own 
sweet  will;  we  clutch  at  it.  It  does  not  enfold  and 
pervade  our  most  arduous  speculations;  no  involun- 
tary sweetness  comes  flooding  in  upon  our  confronta- 
tion of  human  destinies.  Hardy  is  the  last  of  that 
great  line.  If  we  long  for  sweetness — as  we  do  long 
for  it,  and  with  how  poignant  a  pain! — we  must  seek 
it  out,  like  men  who  rush  dusty  and  irritable  from  the 
babble  and  fever  of  the  town.  The  rhythm  of  the 
earth  never  enters  into  their  gait;  they  are  like  spies 
among  the  birds  and  flowers,  like  collectors  of  antique 
furniture  in  the  haunts  of  peace.  The  Georgians 
snatch  at  nature;  they  are  never  part  of  it.  And  there 
is  some  element  of  this  desperation  m  Mr  Masefield. 
We  feel  in  him  an  anxiety  to  load  every  rift  with 
ore  of  this  particular  kind,  a  deliberate  intention 
to  emphasise  that  which  is  most  English  in  the 
English  country-side. 

How  shall  we  say  it  }  It  is  not  that  he  makes  a 
parade  of  arcane  knowledge.  The  word  *  parade  ' 
does  injustice  to  his  indubitable  integrity.  But  we 
seem  to  detect  behind  his  superfluity  of  technical,  and 
at  times  archaic  phrase,  an  unconscious  desire  to 
convince  himself  that  he  is  saturated  in  essential 
Englishness,  and  we  incline  to  think  that  even  his 
choice  of  an  actual  subject  was  less  inevitable  than 
self-imposed.  He  would  isolate  the  quality  he  would 
capture,  have  it  more  wholly  within  his  grasp;    yet, 

A.L.  L  151 


Aspects  of  Literature 

in  some  subtle  way,  it  finally  eludes  him.  The 
intention  is  in  excess,  and  in  the  manner  of  its  execu- 
tion everything  is  (though  often  very  subtly)  in  excess 
also.  The  music  of  English  place-names,  for  instance, 
is  too  insistent;  no  one  into  whom  they  had  entered 
with  the  English  air  itself  would  use  them  with  so 
manifest  an  admiration. 

Perhaps  a  comparison  may  bring  definition  nearer. 
The  first  part  of  Mr  Masefield*s  poem,  which  describes 
the  meet  and  the  assembled  persons  one  by  one, 
recalls,  not  merely  by  the  general  cast  of  the  subject, 
but  by  many  actual  turns  of  phrase,  Chaucer's 
Prologue,  Mr  Masefield's  parson  has  more  than  one 
point  of  resemblance  to  Chaucer's  Monk: — 

*  An  out-ryder,  that  loved  venerye; 
A  manly  man  to  ben  an  abbot  able.  .  .  .' 

But  it  would  take  too  long  to  quote  both  pictures. 
We  may  choose  for  our  juxtaposition  the  Prioress  and 
one  of  Mr  Masefield's  young  ladies: — 

*  Behind  them  rode  her  daughter  Belle, 
A  strange,  shy,  lovely  girl,  whose  face 
Was  sweet  with  thought  and  proud  with  race, 
And  bright  with  joy  at  riding  there. 
She  was  as  good  as  blowing  air. 
But  shy  and  difficult  to  know. 
The  kittens  in  the  barley-mow. 
The  setter's  toothless  puppies  sprawling. 
The  blackbird  in  the  apple  calling. 
All  knew  her  spirit  more  than  we. 
So  delicate  these  maidens  be 
In  loving  lovely  helpless  things.' 
152 


The  Nostalgia  of  Mr  Masefie/d 

And  here  is  the  Prioress: — 

*  But  for  to  speken  of  hir  conscience. 
She  was  so  charitable  and  so  pitous, 
She  wolde  weepe  if  that  she  sawe  a  mous 
Caught  in  a  trappe,  if  it  were  ded  or  bledde. 
Of  smalle  houndes  had  she,  that  she  fed 
With  rosted  flesh,  or  milk,  or  wastel  bread. 
But  sore  wepte  she  if  oon  of  hem  were  ded 
Or  if  men  smote  it  with  a  yerde  smerte: 
And  all  was  conscience  and  tendere  herteJ 
Ful  semely  hir  wympel  pynched  was; 
His  nose  tretys;  hir  eyen  greye  as  glas; 
Hir  mouth  full  small,  and  thereto  soft  and  red, 
But  sikerly  she  hadde  a  fair  forhed.' 

There  is  in  the  Chaucer  a  naturalness,  a  lack  of 
emphasis,  a  confidence  that  the  object  will  not  fail 
to  make  its  own  impression,  beside  which  Mr  Mase- 
field*s  demonstration  and  underlining  seem  almost 
malsain.  How  far  outside  the  true  picture  now  appears 
that  *  blackbird  in  the  apple  calling,'  and  how  tainted 
by  the  desperate  bergerie  of  the  Georgian  era! 

It  is,  we  admit,  a  portentous  experiment  to  make, 
to  set  Mr  Masefield's  prologue  beside  Chaucer's. 
But  not  only  is  it  a  tribute  to  Mr  Masefield  that  he 
brought  us  to  reading  Chaucer  over  again,  but  the 
comparison  is  at  bottom  just.  Chaucer  is  not  what 
we  understand  by  a  great  poet;  he  has  none  of  the 
imaginative  comprehension  and  little  of  the  music 
that  belong  to  one:  but  he  has  perdurable  qualities. 
He  is  at  home  with  his  speech  and  at  home  with  his 
world;  by  his  side  Mr  Masefield  seems  nervous  and 
uncertain  about  both.     He  belongs,  in  fact,  to  a  race 


Aspects  of  Literature 

(or  a  generation)  of  poets  who  have  come  to  feel  a 
necessity  of  overloading  every  rift  with  ore.  The 
question  is  whether  such  a  man  can  hope  to  express 
the  glory  and  the  fragrance  of  the  English  country-side. 
Can  there  be  an  element  of  permanence  in  a  poem 
of  which  the  ultimate  impulse  is  a  nostalgie  de  la  houe 
that  betrays  itself  in  line  after  line,  a  nostalgia  so 
conscious  of  separation  that  it  cannot  trust  that  any 
associations  will  be  evoked  by  an  unemphasised 
appeal  }  Mr  Masefield,  in  his  fervour  to  grasp  at 
that  which  for  all  his  love  is  still  alien  to  him,  seems 
almost  to  shovel  English  mud  into  his  pages;  he 
cannot  (and  rightly  cannot)  persuade  himself  that 
the  scent  of  the  mud  will  be  there  otherwise.  For 
the  same  reason  he  must  make  his  heroes  like  himself. 
Here,  for  example,  is  the  first  whip,  Tom  Dansey: — 

*  His  pleasure  lay  in  hounds  and  horses; 
He  loved  the  Seven  Springs  water-courses. 
Those  flashing  brooks  (in  good  sound  grass. 
Where  scent  would  hang  like  breath  on  glass). 
He  loved  the  English  country-side; 
The  wine-leaved  bramble  in  the  ride, 
The  lichen  on  the  apple-trees. 
The  poultry  ranging  on  the  lees, 
The  farms,  the  moist  earth-smelling  cover, 
His  wife*s  green  grave  at  Mitcheldover, 
Where  snowdrops  pushed  at  the  first  thaw. 
Under  his  hide  his  heart  was  raw 
With  joy  and  pity  of  these  things.  .  .  .' 

That  *  raw  heart '  marks  the  outsider,  the  victim  of 
nostalgia.  Apart  from  the  fact  that  it  is  a  manifest 
artistic  blemish  to  impute  it  to  the  first  whip  of  a  pack 
154 


The  Nostalgia  of  Mr  Masejield 

of  foxhounds,  the  language  is  such  that  it  would  be  a 
mistake  to  impute  it  to  anybody;  and  with  that  we 
come  to  the  question  of  Mr  Masefield's  style  in  general. 
As  if  to  prove  how  rough  indeed  was  the  pro- 
visionally accepted  distinction  between  substance  and 
form,  we  have  for  a  long  while  already  been  discussing 
Mr  Masefield's  style  under  a  specific  aspect.  But  the 
particular  overstrain  we  have  been  examining  is  part 
of  Mr  Masefield's  general  condition.  Overstrain 
is  permanent  with  him.  If  we  do  not  find  it  in  his 
actual  language  (and,  as  we  have  said,  he  is  ridding 
himself  of  the  worst  of  his  exaggerations)  we  are  sure 
to  find  it  in  the  very  vitals  of  his  artistic  effort.  He 
is  seeking  always  to  be  that  which  he  is  not,  to  lash 
himself  into  the  illusion  of  a  certainty  which  he  knows 
he  can  never  wholly  possess. 

*  From  the  Gallows  Hill  to  the  Kineton  Copse 
There  were  ten  ploughed  fields,  like  ten  full- 
stops. 
All  wet  red  clay,  where  a  horse's  foot 
Would  be  swathed,  feet  thick,  like  an  ash-tree 

root. 
The  fox  raced  on,  on  the  headlands  firm, 
Where  his  swift  feet  scared  the  coupling  worm ; 
The  rooks  rose  raving  to  curse  him  raw. 
He  snarled  a  sneer  at  their  swoop  and  caw. 
Then  on,  then  on,  down  a  half-ploughed  field 
Where  a  ship-like  plough  drove  glitter-keeled. 
With   a   bay   horse   near   and   a   white   horse 

leading. 
And  a  man  saying  **  Zook,"  and  the  red  earth 
bleeding.' 


Aspects  of  Literature 

The  rasp  of  exacerbation  is  not  to  be  mistaken.  It 
comes,  we  believe,  from  a  consciousness  of  anaemia, 
a  frenetic  reaction  towards  what  used,  some  years 
ago,  to  be  called  *  blood  and  guts.* 

And  here,  perhaps,  we  have  the  secret  of  Mr 
Masefield  and  of  our  sympathy  with  him.  His  work, 
for  all  its  surface  robustness  and  right-thinking  (which 
has  at  least  the  advantage  that  it  will  secure  for  this 
*  epic  of  fox-hunting  *  a  place  in  the  library  of  every 
country  house),  is  as  deeply  debilitated  by  reaction  as 
any  of  our  time.  Its  colour  is  hectic;  its  tempo 
feverish.  He  has  sought  the  healing  virtue  where  he 
believed  it  undefiled,  in  that  miraculous  English 
country  whose  magic  (as  Mr  Masefield  so  well  knows) 
is  in  Shakespeare,  and  whose  strong  rhythm  is  in 
Hardy.  But  the  virtue  eludes  all  conscious  inquisition. 
The  man  who  seeks  it  feverishly  sees  riot  where  there 
is  peace.  And  may  it  not  be,  in  the  long  run,  that 
Mr  Masefield  would  have  done  better  not  to  delude 
himself  into  an  identification  he  cannot  feel,  but  rather 
to  face  his  own  disquiet  where  alone  the  artist  can 
master  it,  in  his  consciousness  }  We  will  not  presume 
to  answer,  mindful  that  Mr  Masefield  may  not  recog- 
nise himself  in  our  mirror,  but  we  will  content  ourselves 
with  recording  our  conviction  that  in  spite  of  the 
almost  heroic  effort  that  has  gone  to  its  composition 
Reynard  the  Fox  lacks  all  the  qualities  essential  to 
durability.  [january,  1920, 


156 


The  host  Legions 

One  day,  we  believe,  a  great  book  will  be  written, 
informed  by  the  breath  which  moves  the  Spirits  of 
Pity  in  Mr  Hardy's  Dynasts,  It  will  be  a  delicate,  yet 
undeviating  record  of  the  spiritual  awareness  of  the 
generation  that  perished  in  the  war.  It  will  be  a  work 
of  genius,  for  the  essence  that  must  be  captured  within 
it  is  volatile  beyond  belief,  almost  beyond  imagination. 
We  know  of  its  existence  by  signs  hardly  more  material 
than  a  dream-memory  of  beating  wings  or  an  instinctive, 
yet  all  but  inexplicable  refusal  of  that  which  has  been 
offered  us  in  its  stead.  The  autobiographer-novelists 
have  been  legion,  yet  we  turn  from  them  all  with  a  slow 
shake  of  the  head.  *  No,  it  was  not  that.  Had  we  lost 
only  that  we  could  have  forgotten.     It  was  not  that.' 

No,  it  was  the  spirit  that  troubled,  as  in  dream, 
the  waters  of  the  pool,  some  influence  which  trembled 
between  silence  and  a  sound,  a  precarious  confidence, 
an  unavowed  quest,  a  wisdom  that  came  not  of  years 
or  experience,  a  dissatisfaction,  a  doubt,  a  devotion, 
some  strange  presentiment,  it  may  have  been,  of  the 
bitter  years  in  store,  in  memory  an  ineffable,  irrevocable 
beauty,  a  visible  seal  on  the  forehead  of  a  generation. 

*  When  the  lamp  is  shattered 
The  light  in  the  dust  lies  dead — 

When  the  cloud  is  scattered 
The  rainbow's  glory  is  shed. 

When  the  lute  is  broken, 
Sweet  tones  are  remembered  not  .  .  .' 

157 


Aspects  of  Litei^ature 

Yet  out  of  a  thousand  fragments  this  memory  must 
be  created  anew  in  a  form  that  will  outlast  the  years, 
for  it  was  precious.  It  was  something  that  would 
vindicate  an  epoch  against  the  sickening  adulation 
of  the  hero-makers  and  against  the  charge  of  spiritual 
sterility;  a  light  in  whose  gleam  the  bewildering 
non-achievements  of  the  present  age,  the  art  which 
seems  not  even  to  desire  to  be  art,  the  faith  which 
seems  not  to  desire  to  be  faith,  have  substance  and 
meaning.  It  was  shot  through  and  through  by  an 
impulse  of  paradox,  an  unconscious  straining  after 
the  impossible,  gathered  into  two  or  three  tremulous 
years  which  passed  too  swiftly  to  achieve  their  own 
expression.  Now,  what  remains  of  youth  is  cynical, 
is  successful,  publicly  exploits  itself.  It  was  not 
cynical  then. 

Elements  of  the  influence  that  was  are  remembered 
only  if  they  lasted  long  enough  to  receive  a  name. 
There  was  Unanimism.  The  name  is  remembered; 
perhaps  the  books  are  read.  But  it  will  not  be  found 
in  the  books.  They  are  childish,  just  as  the  English 
novels  which  endeavoured  to  portray  the  soul  of  the 
generation  were  coarse  and  conceited.  Behind  all 
the  conscious  manifestations  of  cleverness  and  com- 
plexity lay  a  fundamental  candour  of  which  only  a 
flickering  gleam  can  now  be  recaptured.  It  glints  on 
a  page  of  M.  Romains's  Europe  \  the  memory  of  it 
haunts  Wilfred  Owen's  poems;  it  touches  Keeling's 
letters;  it  hovers  over  these  letters  of  Charles  Sorley.^ 
From  a  hundred  strange  lurking-places  it  must  be 
gathered  by  pious  and  sensitive  fingers  and  with- 
drawn from  under  the  very  edge  of  the  scythe-blade 

*  The  Letters  of  Charles  Sorley.     (Cambridge  University  Press.) 

158 


The  Lost  Legions 

of  time,  for  if  it  wander  longer  without  a  habitation 
it  will  be  lost  for  ever. 

Charles  Sorley  was  the  youngest  fringe  of  the 
strange  unity  that  included  him  and  men  by  ten  years 
his  senior.  He  had  not,  as  they  had,  plunged  with 
fantastic  hopes  and  unspoken  fears  into  the  world. 
He  had  not  learned  the  slogans  of  the  day.  But, 
seeing  that  the  slogans  were  only  a  disguise  for  the 
undefined  desires  which  inspired  them  he  lost  little 
and  gained  much  thereby.  The  years  at  Oxford  in 
which  he  would  have  taken  a  temporary  sameness, 
a  sameness  in  the  long  run  protective  and  strengthen- 
ing, were  spared  him.  In  his  letters  we  have  him 
unspoiled,  as  the  sentimentalists  would  say — not  yet 
with  the  distraction  of  protective  colouring. 

One  who  knew  him  better  than  the  mere  reader 
of  his  letters  can  pretend  to  know  him  declares  that, 
in  spite  of  his  poems,  which  are  among  the  most 
remarkable  of  those  of  the  boy-poets  killed  in  the 
war,  Sorley  would  not  have  been  a  man  of  letters. 
The  evidence  of  the  letters  themselves  is  heavy 
against  the  view;  they  insist  upon  being  regarded 
as  the  letters  of  a  potential  writer.  But  a  passionate 
interest  in  literature  is  not  the  inevitable  prelude  to 
a  life  as  a  writer,  and  although  it  is  impossible  to 
consider  any  thread  in  Sorley's  letters  as  of  importance 
comparable  to  that  which  joins  the  enthronement  and 
dethronement  of  his  literary  idols,  we  shall  regard  it 
as  the  record  of  a  movement  of  soul  which  might  as 
easily  find  expression  (as  did  Kceling^s)  in  other  than 
literary  activities.  It  takes  more  than  literary  men 
to  make  a  generation,  after  all. 

And  Sorley  was  typical  above  all  in  this,  that, 

159 


Aspects  of  Literature 

passionate  and  penetrating  as  was  his  devotion  to 
literature,  he  never  looked  upon  it  as  a  thing  existing 
in  and  for  itself.  It  was,  to  him  and  his  kind,  the 
satisfaction  of  an  impulse  other  and  more  complex 
than  the  aesthetic.  Art  was  a  means  and  not  an  end 
to  him,  and  it  is  perhaps  the  apprehension  of  this 
that  has  led  one  who  endeavoured  in  vain  to  reconcile 
Sorley  to  Pater  into  rash  prognostication.  Sorley 
would  never  have  been  an  artist  in  Pater's  way;  he 
belonged  to  his  own  generation,  to  which  Tart  pour 
Part  had  ceased  to  have  meaning.  There  had  come 
a  pause,  a  throbbing  silence,  from  which  art  might 
have  emerged,  may  even  now  after  the  appointed  time 
arise,  with  strange  validities  undreamed  of  or  forgotten. 
Let  us  not  prophesy;  let  us  be  content  with  the 
recognition  that  Sorley's  generation  was  too  keenly, 
perhaps  too  disastrously  aware  of  destinies,  of 

*  the  beating  of  the  wings  of  Love 
Shut  out  from  his  creation,' 

to  seek  the  comfort  of  the  ivory  tower. 

Sorley  first  appears  before  us  radiant  with  the 
white-heat  of  a  schoolboy  enthusiasm  for  Masefield. 
Masefield  is — how  we  remember  the  feeling! — the 
poet  who  has  lived;  his  naked  reality  tears  through 
*  the  lace  of  putrid  sentimentalism  (educing  the 
effeminate  in  man)  which  rotters  like  Tennyson  and 
Swinburne  have  taught  his  (the  superficial  man's)  soul 
to  love.'  It  tears  through  more  than  Tennyson  and 
Swinburne.    The  greatest  go  down  before  him. 

*  So  you  see  what  I  think  of  John  Masefield. 
1 60 


The  Lost  Legions 

When  I  say  that  he  has  the  rapidity,  simplicity, 
nobiHty  of  Homer,  with  the  power  of  drawing  char- 
acter, the  dramatic  truth  to  Hfe  of  Shakespeare,  along 
with  a  moral  and  emotional  strength  and  elevation 
which  is  all  his  own,  and  therefore  I  am  prepared  to 
put  him  above  the  level  of  these  two  great  men — I 
do  not  expect  you  to  agree  with  me.' — (From  a  paper 
read  at  Marlborough,  November,  19 12.) 

That  was  Sorley  at  seventeen,  and  that,  it  seems  to  us, 
is  the  quality  of  enthusiasm  which  should  be  felt  by 
a  boy  of  seventeen  if  he  is  to  make  his  mark.  It  is 
infinitely  more  important  to  have  felt  that  flaming 
enthusiasm  for  an  idol  who  will  be  cast  down  than 
to  have  felt  what  we  ought  to  feel  for  Shakespeare 
and  Homer.  The  gates  of  heaven  are  opened  by 
strange  keys,  but  they  must  be  our  own. 

Within  six  months  Masefield  had  gone  the  way 
of  all  flesh.  In  a  paper  on  The  Shropshire  Lad  (May, 
19 1 3),  curious  both  for  critical  subtlety  and  the  faint 
taste  of  disillusion,  Sorley  was  saying:  *  His  (Mase- 
field's)  return  (to  the  earth)  was  purely  emotional,  and 
probably  less  interesting  than  the  purely  intellectual 
return  of  Meredith.'  At  the  beginning  of  19 14, 
having  gained  a  Scholarship  at  University  College, 
Oxford,  he  went  to  Germany.  Just  before  going  he 
wrote : — 

*  I  am  just  discovering  Thomas  Hardy.  There 
are  two  methods  of  discovery.  One  is  when  Columbus 
discovers  America.  The  other  is  when  some  one 
begins  to  read  a  famous  author  who  has  already  run 
into  seventy  editions,  and  refuses  to  speak  about 
anything  else,  and  considers  every  one  else  who  reads 

161 


Aspects  of  Litef^ature 


the  author's  works  his  own  special  converts.  Mine 
is  the  second  method.  I  am  more  or  less  Hardy- 
drunk.' 

The  humorous  exactness  and  detachment  of  the 
description  are  remarkable,  and  we  feel  that  there  was 
more  than  the  supersession  of  a  small  by  a  great  idol 
in  this  second  phase.  By  April  he  is  at  Jena,  *  only 
15  miles  from  Goethe's  grave,  whose  inhabitant  has 
taken  the  place  of  Thomas  Hardy  (successor  to 
Masefield)  as  my  favourite  prophet.' 

*  I  hope  (if  nothing  else)  before  I  leave  Germany 
to  get  a  thorough  hang  of  Faust.  .  .  .  The  worst  of 
a  piece  like  Faust  is  that  it  completely  dries  up  any 
creative  instincts  or  attempts  in  oneself.  There  is 
nothing  that  I  have  ever  thought  or  ever  read  that 
is  not  somewhere  contained  in  it,  and  (what  is  worse) 
explained  in  it.' 

He  had  a  sublime  contempt  for  any  one  with  whom  he 
was  not  drunk.  He  lumped  together  *  nasty  old 
Lyttons,  Carlyles,  and  Dickenses.'  And  the  intoxica- 
tion itself  was  swift  and  fleeting.  There  was  something 
wrong  with  Goethe  by  July;  it  is  his  *  entirely 
intellectual  '  life. 

*  If  Goethe  really  died  saying  "  more  light,"  it 
was  very  silly  of  him:  what  he  wanted  was  more 
warmth.' 

And  he  writes  home  for  Richard  Jefferies,  the  man  of 
his  own  county — for  through  Marlborough  he  had 
made  himself  the  adopted  son  of  the  Wiltshire  Downs. 
162 


The  Lost  Legio7is 

*  In  the  midst  of  my  setting  up  and  smashing 
of  deities — Masefield,  Hardy,  Goethe — I  always  fall 
back  on  Richard  Jefferies  wandering  about  in  the 
background.  I  have  at  least  the  tie  of  locality  with 
him.' 

A  day  or  two  after  we  incidentally  discover  that 
Meredith  is  up  (though  not  on  Olympus)  from  a 
denunciation  of  Browning  on  the  queer  non-  (or 
super-)  aesthetic  grounds  of  which  we  have  spoken : — 

*  There  is  much  in  B.  I  like.  But  my  feeling 
towards  him  has  (ever  since  I  read  his  life)  been  that 
of  his  to  the  "  Lost  Leader."  I  cannot  understand 
him  consenting  to  live  a  purely  literary  life  in  Italy, 
or  (worse  still)  consenting  to  be  lionised  by  fashion- 
able London  society.  And  then  I  always  feel  that  if 
less  people  read  Browning,  more  would  read  Meredith 
(his  poetry,  I  mean.)' 

Then,  while  he  was  walking  in  the  Moselle 
Valley,  came  the  war.  He  had  loved  Germany,  and 
the  force  of  his  love  kept  him  strangely  free  from 
illusions;  he  was  not  the  stuff  that  "our  modern 
Elizabethans"  are  made  of.  The  keen  candour  of 
spiritual  innocence  is  in  what  he  wrote  while  training 
at  Shorncliffe: — 

*  For  the  joke  of  seeing  an  obviously  just  cause 
defeated,  I  hope  Germany  will  win.  It  would  do  the 
world  good,  and  show  that  real  faith  is  not  that  which 
says  **  we  must  win  for  our  cause  is  just,"  but  that 
which  says  "our  cause  is  just:  therefore  we  can 
disregard  defeat." '  .  .  . 

163 


Aspects  of  Literature 

*  England — I  am  sick  of  the  sound  of  the  word. 
In  training  to  fight  for  England,  I  am  training  to 
fight  for  that  deliberate  hypocrisy,  that  terrible 
middle-class  sloth  of  outlook  and  appalling  "  imagina- 
tive indolence  "  that  has  marked  us  out  from  genera- 
tion to  generation.  .  .  .  And  yet  we  have  the 
impudence  to  write  down  Germany  (who  with  all 
their  bigotry  are  at  least  seekers)  as  **  Huns,'*  because 
they  are  doing  what  every  brave  man  ought  to  do 
and  making  experiments  in  morality.  Not  that  I 
approve  of  the  experiment  in  this  particular  case. 
Indeed  I  think  that  after  the  war  all  brave  men  will 
renounce  their  country  and  confess  that  they  are 
strangers  and  pilgrims  on  the  earth.  "  For  they  that 
say  such  things  declare  plainly  that  they  seek  a 
country."  But  all  these  convictions  are  useless  for 
me  to  state  since  I  have  not  had  the  courage  of  them. 
What  a  worm  one  is  under  the  cart-wheels — big, 
clumsy,  careless,  lumbering  cart-wheels — of  public 
opinion.  I  might  have  been  giving  my  mind  to 
fight  against  Sloth  and  Stupidity:  instead,  I  am  giving 
my  body  (by  a  refinement  of  cowardice)  to  fight 
against  the  most  enterprising  nation  in  the  world.' 

The  wise  arm-chair  patriots  will  shake  their  heads; 
but  there  is  more  wisdom  of  spirit  in  these  words  than 
in  all  the  newspaper  leaders  written  throughout  the 
war.  Sorley  was  fighting  for  more  than  he  said;  he 
was  fighting  for  his  Wiltshire  Downs  as  well.  But 
he  fought  in  complete  and  utter  detachment.  He 
died  too  soon  (in  October,  191 5),  to  suffer  the 
cumulative  torment  of  those  who  lasted  into  the  long 
agony  of  191 7.  There  is  litrie  bitterness  in  his 
164 


The  Lost  Legio7ts 

letters;  they  have  to  the  last  always  the  crystal  clarity 
of  the  vision  of  the  unbroken. 

His  intellectual  evolution  went  on  to  the  end.  No 
wonder  that  he  found  Rupert  Brooke's  sonnets 
overpraised : — 

*  He  is  far  too  obsessed  with  his  own  sacrifice. 
...  It  was  not  that  "  they  **  gave  up  anything  of 
that  list  he  gives  in  one  sonnet:  but  that  the  essence 
of  these  things  had  been  endangered  by  circumstances 
over  which  he  had  no  control,  and  he  must  fight  to 
recapture  them.  He  has  clothed  his  attitude  in  fine 
words:   but  he  has  taken  the  sentimental  attitude.* 

Remember  that  a  boy  of  nineteen  is  writing,  and  think 
how  keen  is  this  criticism  of  Brooke's  war  sonnets;  the 
seeker  condemns  without  pity  one  who  has  given 
up  the  search.  *  There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  just  war,' 
writes  this  boy.  *  What  we  are  doing  is  casting  out 
Satan  by  Satan.'  From  this  position  Sorley  never 
flinched.  Never  for  a  moment  was  he  renegade  to 
his  generation  by  taking  *  the  sentimental  attitude.' 
Neither  had  he  in  him  an  atom  of  the  narrowness 
of  the  straiter  sect. 

Though  space  forbids,  we  will  follow  out  his 
progress  to  the  last.  We  do  not  receive  many  such 
gifts  as  this  book;  the  authentic  voice  of  those  lost 
legions  is  seldom  heard.  We  can  afford,  surely,  to 
listen  to  it  to  the  end.  In  November,  19 14,  Sorley 
turns  back  to  the  Hardy  of  the  poems.  After  rejecting 
*  the  actual  **  Satires  of  Circumstance " '  as  bad 
poetry,  and  passing  an  incisive  criticism  on  *  Men 
who  March  away,'  he  continues: — 

165 


Aspects  of  Liter attcre 

*  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  Hardy  is  the  greatest 
artist  of  the  English  character  since  Shakespeare: 
and  much  of  The  Dynasts  (except  its  historical  fidelity) 
might  be  Shakespeare.  But  I  value  his  lyrics  as 
presenting  himself  (the  self  he  does  not  obtrude  into 
the  comprehensiveness  of  his  novels  and  The  Dynasts) 
as  truly,  and  with  faults  as  well  as  strength  visible 
in  it,  as  any  character  in  his  novels.  His  lyrics  have 
not  the  spontaneity  of  Shakespeare's  or  Shelley's: 
they  are  rough-hewn  and  jagged:  but  I  like  them, 
and  they  stick.* 

A  little  later,  having  finished  The  Egoist^ — 

*  I  see  now  that  Meredith  belongs  to  that  class 
of  novelists  with  whom  I  do  not  usually  get  on  so 
well  {e.g,  Dickens),  who  create  and  people  worlds  of 
their  own  so  that  one  approaches  the  characters  with 
amusement,  admiration,  or  contempt,  not  with  liking 
or  pity,  as  with  Hardy's  people,  into  whom  the  author 
does  not  inject  his  own  exaggerated  characteristics.' 

The  great  Russians  were  unknown  to  Sorley  when 
he  died.  What  would  he  not  have  found  in  those 
mighty  seekers,  with  whom  Hardy  alone  stands 
equal  ?  But  whatever  might  have  been  his  vicissitudes 
in  that  strange  company,  we  feel  that  Hardy  could 
never  have  been  dethroned  in  his  heart,  for  other 
reasons  than  that  the  love  of  the  Wessex  hills  had 
crept  into  his  blood.  He  was  killed  on  October  13, 
1 91 5,  shot  in  the  head  by  a  sniper  as  he  led  his 
company  at  the  *  hair-pin  '  trench  near  Hulluch. 

[JANUARY,  1920. 
166 


The  Cry  m  the  Wilderness 

We  have  in  Mr  Irving  Babbitt's  Rousseau  and  Romanticism 
to  deal  with  a  closely  argued  and  copiously  documented 
indictment  of  the  modern  mind.  We  gather  that 
this  book  is  but  the  latest  of  several  books  in  which 
the  author  has  gradually  developed  his  theme,  and 
we  regret  exceedingly  that  the  preceding  volumes 
have  not  fallen  into  our  hands,  because  whatever 
may  be  our  final  attitude  towards  the  author's  con- 
clusions, we  cannot  but  regard  Rousseau  and  Romanti- 
cism as  masterly.  Its  style  is,  we  admit,  at  times 
rather  harsh  and  crabbed,  but  the  critical  thought 
which  animates  it  is  of  a  kind  so  rare  that  we  are 
almost  impelled  to  declare  that  it  is  the  only  book  of 
modern  criticism  which  can  be  compared  for  clarity 
and  depth  of  thought  with  Mr  Santayana's  Three 
Philosophical  Poets, 

By  endeavouring  to  explain  the  justice  of  that 
verdict  we  shall  more  easily  give  an  indication  of  the 
nature  and  scope  of  Professor  Babbitt's  achievement. 
W'e  think  that  it  would  be  easy  to  show  that  in  the 
last  generation — we  will  go  no  further  back  for  the 
moment,  though  our  author's  arraignment  reaches  at 
least  a  century  earlier — criticism  has  imperceptibly 
given  way  to  a  different  activity  which  we  may  call 
appreciation.  The  emphasis  has  been  laid  upon  the 
uniqueness  of  the  individual,  and  the  unconscious 
or  avowed  aim  of  the  modern  *  critic  '  has  been  to 
persuade  us  to  understand,  to  sympathise  with  and 
in  the  last  resort  to  enter  into  the  whole  psychological 
A.L.  M  167 


Aspects  of  Literature 

process  which  culminated  in  the  artistic  creation  of 
the  author  examined.  And  there  modern  criticism 
has  stopped.  There  has  been  no  indication  that  it 
was  aware  of  the  necessity  of  going  further.  Many 
influences  went  to  shape  the  general  conviction  that 
mere  presentation  was  the  final  function  of  criticism, 
but  perhaps  the  chief  of  these  was  the  curious  con- 
tagion of  a  scientific  terminology.  The  word  *  objec- 
tivity '  had  a  great  vogue ;  it  was  felt  that  the  spiritual 
world  was  analogous  to  the  physical;  the  critic  was 
faced,  like  the  man  of  science,  with  a  mass  of  hard, 
irreducible  facts,  and  his  function  was,  like  the 
scientist's,  that  of  recording  them  as  compendiously 
as  possible  and  without  prejudice.  The  unconscious 
programme  was,  indeed,  impossible  of  fulfilment. 
All  facts  may  be  of  equal  interest  to  the  scientist, 
but  they  are  not  to  the  literary  critic.  He  chose 
those  which  interested  him  most  for  the  exercise  of 
his  talent  for  demonstration.  But  that  choice  was, 
as  a  general  rule,  the  only  specifically  critical  act 
which  he  performed,  and,  since  it  was  usually  un- 
motived,  it  was  difficult  to  attach  even  to  that  more 
than  a  *  scientific  *  importance.  Reasoned  judgments 
of  value  were  rigorously  eschewed,  and  even  though 
we  may  presume  that  the  modern  critic  is  at  times 
vexed  by  the  problem  why  (or  whether)  one  work  of 
art  is  better  than  another,  when  each  seems  perfectly 
expressive  of  the  artist's  intention,  the  preoccupation 
is  seldom  betrayed  in  the  language  of  his  appreciation. 
Tacitly  and  insensibly  we  have  reached  a  point  at 
which  all  works  of  art  are  equally  good  if  they  are 
equally  expressive.  What  every  artist  seeks  to  express 
is  his  own  unique  consciousness.  As  between  things 
i68 


The  Cry  in  the  Wilderness 

unique   there   is   no   possibility   of  subordination   or 
comparison. 

That  does  not  seem  to  us  an  unduly  severe 
diagnosis  of  modern  criticism,  although  it  needs 
perhaps  to  be  balanced  by  an  acknowledgment  that 
the  impulse  towards  the  penetration  of  an  artist's 
consciousness  is  in  itself  salutary,  as  a  valuable  adjunct 
to  the  methods  of  criticism,  provided  that  it  is  definitely 
subordinated  to  the  final  critical  judgment,  before 
which  uniqueness  is  an  impossible  plea.  Such  a 
diagnosis  will  no  doubt  be  welcomed  by  those  who 
belong  to  an  older  generation  than  that  to  which  it 
is  applied.  But  they  should  not  rejoice  prematurely. 
We  require  of  them  an  answer  to  the  question  whether 
they  were  really  in  better  case — whether  they  were 
not  the  fathers  whose  sins  are  visited  upon  the  children. 
Professor  Babbitt,  at  least,  has  no  doubt  of  their 
responsibility.  From  his  angle  of  approach  we  might 
rake  their  ranks  with  a  cross-fire  of  questions  such  as 
these:  When  you  invoked  the  sanction  of  criticism 
were  you  more  than  merely  destructive  ?  When  you 
riddled  religion  with  your  scientific  objections,  did 
you  not  forget  that  religion  is  something  more,  far 
more  than  a  nexus  of  historical  facts  or  a  cosmogony  ? 
When  you  questioned  everything  in  the  name  of  truth 
and  science,  why  did  you  not  dream  of  asking  whether 
those  creations  of  men's  minds  were  capax  imperii  in 
man's  universe  ?  What  right  had  you  to  suppose 
that  a  man  disarmed  of  tradition  is  stronger  for  his 
nakedness  ?  Why  did  you  not  examine  in  the  name 
of  that  same  truth  and  science  the  moral  nature  of 
man,  and  see  whether  it  was  fit  to  bear  the  burden 
of  intolerable  knowledge  which  you   put  upon   it  ? 

169 


Aspects  of  Literature 

Why  did  you,  the  truth-seekers  and  the  scientists, 
indulge  yourselves  in  the  most  romantic  dream  of  a 
natural  man  who  followed  instinctively  the  greatest 
good  of  the  greatest  number,  which  you  yourselves 
never  for  one  moment  pursued  ?  What  hypocrisy 
or  self-deception  enabled  you  to  clothe  your  state- 
ments of  fact  in  a  moral  aura,  and  to  blind  yourselves 
and  the  world  to  the  truth  that  you  were  killing  a 
domesticated  dragon  who  guarded  the  cave  of  a 
devouring  hydra,  whom  you  benevolently  loosed  ? 
Why  did  you  not  see  that  the  end  of  all  your  devotion 
was  to  shift  man's  responsibility  for  himself  from  his 
shoulders  ?  Do  you,  because  you  clothed  yourselves 
in  the  shreds  of  a  moral  respectability  which  you  had 
not  the  time  (or  was  it  the  courage  ?)  to  analyse,  dare 
to  denounce  us  because  our  teeth  are  set  on  edge  by 
the  sour  grapes  which  you  enjoyed  ? 

But  this  mdictment,  it  may  be  said  by  a  modern 
critic,  deals  with  morals,  and  we  are  discussing  art 
and  criticism.  That  the  objection  is  conceivable  is 
precisely  the  measure  of  our  decadence.  For  the 
vital  centre  of  our  ethics  is  also  the  vital  centre  of  our 
art.  Moral  nihilism  inevitably  involves  an  aesthetic 
nihilism,  which  can  be  obscured  only  temporarily  by 
an  insistence  upon  technical  perfection  as  in  itself  a 
supreme  good.  Neither  the  art  of  religion  nor  the 
religion  of  art  is  an  adequate  statement  of  the  possi- 
bilities and  purpose  of  art,  but  there  is  no  doubt  that 
the  religion  of  art  is  by  far  the  more  vacuous  of  the 
two.  The  values  of  literature,  the  standards  by  which 
it  must  be  criticised,  and  the  scheme  according  to 
which  it  must  be  arranged,  are  in  the  last  resort  moral. 
The  sense  that  they  should  be  more  moral  than  morality 
170 


The  Cry  in  the  Wilderness 

affords  no  excuse  for  accepting  them  when  they  are 
less  so.  Literature  should  be  a  kingdom  where  a 
sterner  morality,  a  more  strenuous  liberty  prevails 
— where  the  artist  may  dispense  if  he  will  with  the 
ethics  of  the  society  in  which  he  lives,  but  only  on 
condition  of  revealing  a  deeper  insight  into  the  moral 
law  to  whose  allegiance  man,  in  so  far  as  he  is  man 
and  not  a  beast,  inevitably  tends.  Never,  we  suppose, 
was  an  age  in  which  art  stood  in  greater  need  of  the 
true  law  of  decorum  than  this.  Its  philosophy  has 
played  it  false.  It  has  passed  from  the  nebulous 
Hegelian  adulation  of  the  accomplished  fact  (though 
one  would  have  thought  that  to  a  generation  with  even 
a  vague  memory  of  Aristotle*s  Poetics^  the  mere  title, 
The  Philosophy  of  History  would  have  been  an  evident 
danger  signal)  to  an  adulation  of  science  and  of 
instinct.  From  one  side  comes  the  cry,  *  Man  is  a 
beast  *;  from  the  other,  *  Trust  your  instincts.'  The 
sole  manifest  employment  of  reason  is  to  overthrow 
itself.  Yet  it  should  be,  in  conjunction  with  the 
imagination,  the  vital  principle  of  control. 

Professor  Babbitt  would  have  us  back  to  Aristotle, 
or  back  to  our  senses,  which  is  roughly  the  same 
thing.  At  all  events,  it  is  certain  that  in  Aristotle 
the  present  generation  would  find  the  beginnings  of 
a  remedy  for  that  fatal  confusion  of  categories  which 
has  overcome  the  world.  It  is  the  confusion  between 
existence  and  value.  That  strange  malady  of  the 
mind  by  which  in  the  nineteenth  century  material 
progress  was  supposed  to  create,  ipso  facto^  a  con- 
comitant moral  progress,  and  which  so  plunged  the 
world  into  catastrophe,  has  its  counterpart  in  a 
literature   of  objective   realism.      One   of  the   most 

171 


Aspects  of  Literature 

admired  of  contemporary  works  of  fiction  opens  with 
an  infant's  memory  of  a  mackintosh  sheet,  pleasantly 
warmed  with  its  own  water;  another,  of  almost  equal 
popularity  among  the  cultivated,  abounds  with  such 
reminiscences  of  the  heroine  as  the  paste  of  bread 
with  which  she  filled  her  decaying  teeth  while  she 
ate  her  breakfast.  Yet  the  young  writers  who  abuse 
their  talents  so  unspeakably  have  right  on  their  side 
when  they  refuse  to  listen  to  the  condemnation  pro- 
nounced by  an  older  generation.  What  right,  indeed, 
have  these  to  condemn  the  logical  outcome  of  an 
anarchic  individualism  which  they  themselves  so 
jealously  cherished  }  They  may  not  like  the  bastard 
progeny  of  the  various  mistresses  they  adored — of  a 
Science  which  they  enthroned  above  instead  of 
subordinating  to  humanistic  values,  of  a  brutal 
Imperialism  which  the  so-called  Conservatives  among 
them  set  up  in  place  of  the  truly  humane  devotion  of 
which  man  is  capable,  of  the  sickening  humanitarianism 
which  appears  in  retrospect  to  have  been  merely  an 
excuse  for  absolute  indolence — but  they  certainly  have 
forfeited  the  right  to  censure  it.  Let  those  who  are 
so  eager  to  cast  the  first  stone  at  the  aesthetic  and 
moral  anarchy  of  the  present  day  consider  Professor 
Babbitt's  indictment  of  themselves  and  decide  whether 
they  have  no  sin: — 


*  "  If  I  am  to  judge  by  myself,"  said  an  eighteenth- 
century  Frenchman,  "  man  is  a  stupid  animal." 
Man  is  not  only  a  stupid  animal,  in  spite  of  his  conceit 
of  his  own  cleverness,  but  we  are  here  at  the  source 
of  his  stupidity.  The  source  is  the  moral  indolence 
that  Buddha,  with  his  almost  infallible  sagacity, 
172 


The  Cry  m  the  Wilderness 

defined  long  ago.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  his  spiritual 
and,  in  the  long  run,  his  material  success,  hinge  on 
his  ethical  effort,  man  persists  in  dodging  this  effort, 
in  seeking  to  follow  the  line  of  least  or  lesser  resistance. 
An  energetic  material  working  does  not  mend,  but 
aggravate  the  failure  to  work  ethically,  and  is  there- 
fore especially  stupid.  Just  this  combination  has  in 
fact  led  to  the  crowning  stupidity  of  the  ages — the 
Great  War.  No  more  delirious  spectacle  has  ever 
been  witnessed  than  that  of  hundreds  of  millions  of 
human  beings  using  a  vast  machinery  of  scientific 
efficiency  to  turn  life  into  a  hell  for  one  another.  It 
is  hard  to  avoid  concluding  that  we  are  living  in  a 
world  which  has  gone  wrong  on  first  principles,  a 
world  that,  in  spite  of  all  the  warnings  of  the  past,  has 
allowed  itself  to  be  caught  once  more  in  the  terrible 
naturalistic  trap.  The  dissolution  of  civilisation 
with  which  we  are  threatened  is  likely  to  be  worse 
in  some  respects  than  that  of  Greece  or  Rome,  in  view 
of  the  success  that  has  been  obtained  in  *  perfecting 
the  mystery  of  murder.*  Various  traditional  agencies 
are  indeed  still  doing  much  to  chain  up  the  beast  in 
man.  Of  these  the  chief  is  no  doubt  the  Church. 
But  the  leadership  of  the  Occident  is  no  longer  here. 
The  leaders  have  succumbed  in  greater  or  less  degree 
to  naturalism,  and  so  have  been  tampering  with  the 
moral  law.  That  the  brutal  imperialist  who  brooks 
no  obstacle  to  his  lust  for  domination  has  been 
tampering  with  this  law  goes  without  saying,  but  the 
humanitarian,  all  adrip  with  brotherhood  and  pro- 
foundly convinced  of  the  loveliness  of  his  own  soul, 
has  been  tampering  with  it  also,  and  in  a  more 
dangerous  way,   for  the  very  reason  that  it  is  less 

^73 


Aspects  of  Litter  at  lire 

obvious.  This  tampering  with  the  moral  law,  or, 
what  amounts  to  the  same  thing,  this  overriding  of 
the  veto  power  in  man,  has  been  largely  a  result, 
though  not  a  necessary  result,  of  the  rupture  with  the 
traditional  forms  of  wisdom.  The  Baconian  naturalist 
repudiated  the  past  because  he  wished  to  be  more 
positive  and  critical,  to  plant  himself  on  the  facts. 
But  the  veto  power  is  itself  a  fact — the  weightiest  with 
which  man  has  to  reckon.  The  Rousseauistic  natural- 
ist threw  off  traditional  control  because  he  wished  to 
be  more  imaginative.  Yet  without  the  veto  power 
imagination  falls  into  sheer  anarchy.  Both  Baconian 
and  Rousseauist  were  very  impatient  of  any  outer 
authority  that  seemed  to  stand  between  them  and 
their  own  perceptions.  Yet  the  veto  power  is  nothing 
abstract,  nothing  that  one  needs  to  take  on  hearsay, 
but  is  very  immediate.  The  naturalistic  leaders  may 
be  proved  wrong  without  going  beyond  their  own 
principles,  and  their  wrongness  is  of  a  kind  to  wreck 
civilisation.' 

We  find  it  impossible  to  refuse  our  assent  to  the 
main  counts  of  this  indictment.  The  deanthropo- 
centrised  universe  of  science  is  not  the  universe  in 
which  man  has  to  live.  That  universe  is  at  once  smaller 
and  larger  than  the  universe  of  science:  smaller  in 
material  extent,  larger  in  spiritual  possibility.  There- 
fore to  allow  the  perspective  of  science  seriously  to 
influence,  much  less  control,  our  human  values,  is  an 
invitation  to  disaster.  Humanism  must  reassert 
itself,  for  even  we  can  see  that  Shakespeares  are  better 
than  Hamlets.  The  reassertion  of  humanism  involves 
the  re-creation  of  a  practical  ideal  of  human  life  and 
174 


The  Cry  i7i  the  Wilderness 

conduct,  and  a  strict  subordination  of  the  impulses 
of  the  individual  to  this  ideal.  There  must  now  be 
a  period  of  critical  and  humanistic  positivism  in 
regard  to  ethics  and  to  art.  We  may  say  frankly 
that  it  is  not  to  our  elders  that  we  think  of  applying 
for  its  rudiments.  We  regard  them  as  no  less  mis- 
guided and  a  good  deal  less  honest  than  ourselves. 
It  is  among  our  anarchists  that  we  shall  look  most 
hopefully  for  our  new  traditionalists,  if  only  because, 
in  literature  at  least,  they  are  more  keenly  aware  of 
the  nature  of  the  abyss  on  the  brink  of  which  they  are 
trembling.  [february,  1920. 


175 


Poetry  and  Criticism 

Nowadays  we  are  all  vexed  by  this  question  of 
poetry,  and  in  ways  peculiar  to  ourselves.  Fifty 
years  ago  the  dispute  was  whether  Browning  was  a 
greater  poet  than  Tennyson  or  Swinburne;  to-day  it 
is  apparently  more  fundamental,  and  perhaps  sub- 
stantially more  threadbare.  We  are  in  a  curious, 
half-conscious  way  incessantly  debating  what  poetry 
is,  impelled  by  a  sense  that,  although  we  have  been 
living  at  a  time  of  extraordinarily  prolific  poetic 
production,  not  very  much  good  has  come  out  of 
it.  Having  thus  passed  the  stage  at  which  the  theory 
that  poetry  is  an  end  in  itself  will  suffice  us,  we 
vaguely  cast  about  in  our  minds  for  some  fuller 
justification  of  the  poetic  activity.  A  presentiment 
that  our  poetic  values  are  chaotic  is  widespread;  we 
are  uncomfortable  with  it,  and  there  is,  we  believe,  a 
genuine  desire  that  a  standard  should  be  once  more 
created  and  applied. 

What  shall  we  require  of  poetry  ?  Delight, 
music,  subtlety  of  thought,  a  world  of  the  heart's 
desire,  fidelity  to  comprehensible  experience,  a  glimpse 
through  magic  casements,  profound  wisdom  }  All 
these  things — all  different,  yet  not  all  contradictory 
— have  been  required  of  poetry.  What  shall  we 
require  of  her  :  The  answer  comes,  it  seems,  as 
quick  and  as  vague  as  the  question.  We  require  the 
highest.  All  that  can  be  demanded  of  any  spiritual 
activity  of  man  we  must  demand  of  poetry.  It 
must  be  adequate  to  all  our  experience;    it  must  be 

176 


Poetry  and  Criticism 

not  a  diversion  from,  but  a  culmination  of  life;  it 
must  be  working  steadily  towards  a  more  complete 
universality. 

Suddenly  we  may  turn  upon  ourselves  and  ask 
what  right  we  have  to  demand  these  things  of  poetry; 
or  others  will  turn  upon  us  and  say:  *  This  is  a 
lyrical  age.*  To  ourselves  and  to  the  others  we  are 
bound  to  reply  that  poetry  must  be  maintained  in  the 
proud  position  where  it  has  always  been,  the  sovereign 
language  of  the  human  spirit,  the  sublimation  of  all 
experience.  In  the  past  there  has  never  been  a 
lyrical  age,  though  there  have  been  ages  of  minor 
poetry,  when  poetry  was  no  longer  deliberately  made 
the  vehicle  of  man's  profoundest  thought  and  most 
searching  experience.  Nor  was  it  the  ages  of  minor 
poetry  which  produced  great  lyrical  poetry.  Great 
lyrical  poetry  has  always  been  an  incidental  achieve- 
ment, a  parergon,  of  great  poets,  and  great  poets 
have  always  been  those  who  believed  that  poetry 
was  by  nature  the  worthiest  vessel  of  the 
highest  argument  of  which  the  soul  of  man  is 
capable. 

Yet  a  poetic  theory  such  as  this  seems  bound  to 
include  great  prose,  and  not  merely  the  prose  which 
can  most  easily  be  assimilated  to  the  condition  of 
poetry,  such  as  Plato's  Republic  or  Milton's  Areo- 
pagitica^  but  the  prose  of  the  great  novelists.  wSurely 
the  colloquial  prose  of  Tchehov's  Cherry  Orchard 
has  as  good  a  claim  to  be  called  poetry  as  The  Essay 
on  Man,  Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles  as  The  Ring  and 
the  Book,  The  Possessed  as  Phedre }  Where  are 
we  to  call  a  halt  in  the  inevitable  process  by 
which   the   kinds   of  literary   art    merge   into   one  ? 

177 


Aspects  of  Literature 

If  we  insist  that  rhythm  is  essential  to  poetry,  we  are 
in  danger  of  confusing  the  accident  with  the 
essence,  and  of  fastening  upon  what  will  prove 
to  be  in  the  last  analysis  a  merely  formal  diifference. 
The  difference  we  seek  must  be  substantial  and 
essential. 

The  very  striking  merit  of  Sir  Henry  Newbolt*s 
New  Study  of  English  Poetry  is  that  he  faces  the 
ultimate  problem  of  poetry  with  courage,  sincerity, 
and  an  obvious  and  passionate  devotion  to  the  highest 
spiritual  activity  of  man.  It  has  seldom  been  our 
good  fortune  to  read  a  book  of  criticism  in  which  we 
were  so  impressed  by  what  we  can  only  call  a  purity 
of  intention;  we  feel  throughout  that  the  author's 
aim  is  single,  to  set  before  us  the  results  of  his  own 
sincere  thinking  on  a  matter  of  infinite  moment. 
Perhaps  better,  because  subtler,  books  of  literary 
criticism  have  appeared  in  England  during  the  last 
ten  years — if  so,  we  have  not  read  them;  but  there 
has  been  none  more  truly  tolerant,  more  evidently 
free  from  malice,  more  certainly  the  product  of  a 
soul  in  which  no  lie  remains.  Whether  it  is  that  Sir 
Henry  has  like  Plato's  Cephalus  lived  his  literary 
life  blamelessly,  we  do  not  know,  but  certainly  he 
produces  upon  us  an  effect  akin  to  that  of 
Cephalus's  peaceful  smile  when  he  went  on  his 
way  to  sacrifice  duly  to  the  gods  and  left  the 
younger  men  to  the  intricacies  of  their  infinite 
debate. 

Now  it  seems  to  us  of  importance  that  a  writer 
like  Sir  Henry  Newbolt  should  declare  roundly  that 
creative  poetry  and  creative  prose  belong  to  the  same 
kind.     It  is  important  not  because  there  is  anything 

178 


Poetry  aitd  Criticism 

very  novel  in  the  contention,  but  because  it  is  oppor- 
tune; and  it  is  opportune  because  at  the  present 
moment  we  need  to  have  emphasis  laid  on  the  vital 
element  that  is  common  both  to  creative  poetry  and 
creative  prose.  The  general  mind  loves  confusion, 
blest  mother  of  haze  and  happiness;  it  loves  to  be 
able  to  conclude  that  this  is  an  age  of  poetry  from  the 
fact  that  the  books  of  words  cut  up  into  lines  or 
sprinkled  with  rhymes  are  legion.  An  age  of  fiddle- 
sticks! Whatever  the  present  age  is — and  it  is  an 
age  of  many  interesting  characteristics — it  is  not  an 
age  of  poetry.  It  would  indeed  have  a  better  chance 
of  being  one  if  fifty  instead  of  ^v^  hundred  books  of 
verse  were  produced  every  month;  and  if  all  the 
impresarios  were  shouting  that  it  was  an  age  of  prose. 
The  differentia  of  verse  is  a  merely  trivial  accident; 
what  is  essential  in  poetry,  or  literature  if  you  will,  is 
an  act  of  intuitive  comprehension.  Where  you  have 
the  evidence  of  that  act,  the  sovereign  aesthetic  process, 
there  you  have  poetry.  W^hat  remains  for  you,  whether 
you  are  a  critic  or  a  poet  or  both  together,  is  to  settle 
for  yourself  a  system  of  values  by  which  those  various 
acts  of  intuitive  comprehension  may  be  judged.  It 
does  not  suffice  at  any  time,  much  less  does  it  suffice 
at  the  present  day,  to  be  content  with  the  uniqueness 
of  the  pleasure  which  you  derive  from  each  single  act 
of  comprehension  made  vocal.  That  contentment  is 
the  comfortable  privilege  of  the  amateur  and  the 
dilettante.  It  is  not  sufficient  to  get  a  unique  pleasure 
from  Mr  De  la  Mare*s  Arabia  or  Mr  Davies's  Lovely 
Dames  or  Miss  Katherine  Mansfield's  Prelude  or  Mr 
Eliot's  Portrait  of  a  Lady^  in  each  of  which  the  vital 
act    of   intuitive    comprehension    is    made    manifest. 

179 


Aspects  of  Literature 

One  must  establish  a  hierarchy,  and  decide  which 
act  of  comprehension  is  the  more  truly  comprehensive, 
which  poem  has  the  completer  universality.  One 
must  be  prepared  not  only  to  relate  each  poetic 
expression  to  the  finest  of  its  kind  in  the  past, 
or  to  recognise  a  new  kind  if  a  new  kind  has 
been  created,  but  to  relate  the  kind  to  the  finest 
kind. 

That,  as  it  seems  to  us,  is  the  specifically  critical 
activity,  and  one  which  is  in  peril  of  death  from 
desuetude.  The  other  important  type  of  criticism, 
which  is  analysis  of  poetic  method,  an  investigation 
and  appreciation  of  the  means  by  which  the  poet 
communicates  his  intuitive  comprehension  to  an 
audience,  is  in  a  less  perilous  condition.  Where  there 
are  real  poets — and  only  a  bigot  will  deny  that  there 
are  real  poets  among  us  now:  we  have  just  named 
four — there  will  always  be  true  criticism  of  poetic 
method,  though  it  may  seldom  find  utterance  in  the 
printed  word.  But  criticism  of  poetic  method  has, 
by  hypothesis,  no  perspective  and  no  horizons;  it 
is  concerned  with  a  unique  thing  under  the  aspect  of 
its  uniqueness.  It  may,  and  happily  most  often  does, 
assume  that  poetry  is  the  highest  expression  of  the 
.spiritual  life  of  man;  but  it  makes  no  endeavour  to 
assess  it  according  to  the  standards  that  are  implicit 
in  such  an  assumption.  That  is  the  function  of 
philosophical  criticism.  If  philosophical  criticism 
can  be  combined  with  criticism  of  method — and  there 
is  no  reason  why  they  should  not  coexist  in  a  single 
person ;  the  only  two  English  critics  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  Coleridge  and  Arnold,  were  of  this  kind 
— so  much  the  better;  but  it  is  philosophical  criticism 
i8o 


Poetry  and  Criticism 

of    which    we    stand     in    desperate    need    at    this 
moment. 

A  good  friend  of  ours,  who  happens  to  be  one  of 
the  few  real  poets  we  possess,  once  wittily  summed 
up  a  general  objection  to  criticism  of  the  kind  we 
advocate  as  *  always  asking  people  to  do  what  they 
can't.'  But  to  point  out,  as  the  philosophical  critic 
would,  that  poetry  itself  must  inevitably  languish  if 
the  more  comprehensive  kinds  are  neglected,  or  if 
a  non-poetic  age  is  allowed  complacently  to  call  itself 
lyrical,  is  not  to  urge  the  real  masters  in  the  less 
comprehensive  kinds  to  desert  their  work.  Who  but 
a  fool  would  ask  Mr  De  la  Mare  to  write  an  epic  or 
Miss  Mansfield  to  give  us  a  novel  }  But  he  might  be 
a  wise  man  who  called  upon  Mr  Eliot  to  set  himself 
to  the  composition  of  a  poetic  drama;  and  without 
a  doubt  he  would  deserve  well  of  the  commonwealth 
who  should  summon  the  popular  imitators  of  Mr  De 
la  Mare,  Mr  Davies,  or  Mr  Eliot  to  begin  by  trying 
to  express  something  that  they  did  comprehend  or 
desired  to  comprehend,  even  though  it  should  take 
them  into  thousands  of  unprintable  pages.  It  is 
infinitely  preferable  that  those  who  have  so  far  given 
evidence  of  nothing  better  than  a  fatal  fluency  in 
insipid  imitation  of  true  lyric  poets  should  fall  down 
a  precipice  in  the  attempt  to  scale  the  very  pinnacles 
of  Parnassus.  There  is  something  heroic  about  the 
most  unmitigated  disaster  at  such  an  altitude. 

Moreover,  the  most  marked  characteristic  of  the- 
present  age  is  a  continual  disintegration  of  the  con- 
sciousness ;  more  or  less  deliberately  in  every  province 
of  man's  spiritual  life  the  r^ins  are  being  thrown  on  to 
the  horse's  neck.     The  power  which  controls  and 

i8i 


Aspects  of  Literature 

disciplines  sensational  experience  is,  in  modern  litera- 
ture, daily  denied;  the  counterpart  of  this  power 
which  envisages  the  ideal  in  the  conduct  of  one's 
own  or  the  nation's  affairs  and  unfalteringly  pursues 
it  is  held  up  to  ridicule.  Opportunism  in  politics 
has  its  complement  in  opportunism  in  poetry.     Mr 

Lloyd  George's  moods  are  reflected  in  Mr  's. 

And,  beneath  these  heights,  we  have  the  queer 
spectacle  of  a  whole  race  of  very  young  poets  who 
somehow  expect  to  attain  poetic  intensity  by  the 
physical  intensity  with  which  they  look  at  any  dis- 
agreeable object  that  happens  to  come  under  their 
eye.  Perhaps  they  will  find  some  satisfaction  in  being 
reckoned  among  the  curiosities  of  literature  a  hundred 
years  hence;  it  is  certainly  the  only  satisfaction  they 
will  have.  They,  at  any  rate,  have  a  great  deal  to 
gain  from  the  acid  of  philosophical  criticism.  If  a 
reaction  to  life  has  in  itself  the  seeds  of  an  intuitive 
comprehension  it  will  stand  explication.  If  a  young 
poet's  nausea  at  the  sight  of  a  toothbrush  is  significant 
of  anything  at  all  except  bad  upbringing,  then  it  is 
capable  of  being  refined  into  a  vision  of  life  and  of 
being  expressed  by  means  of  the  appropriate  mechanism 
or  myth.  But  to  register  the  mere  facts  of  conscious- 
ness, undigested  by  the  being,  without  assessment 
or  reinforcement  by  the  mind  is,  for  all  the  connection 
it  has  with  poetry,  no  better  than  to  copy  down  the 
numbers  of  one's  bus-tickets. 

We  do  not  wish  to  suggest  that  Sir  Henry  Newbolt 
would  regard  this  lengthy  gloss  upon  his  book  as 
legitimate  deduction.  He,  we  think,  is  a  good  deal 
more  tolerant  than  we  are;  and  he  would  probably 
hesitate  to  work  out  the  consequences  of  the  principles 
182 


Poetry  and  Criticism 

which  he  enunciates  and  apply  them  vigorously  to 
the  present  time.  But  as  a  vindication  of  the  supreme 
place  of  poetry  as  poetry  in  human  life,  as  a  stimulus 
to  critical  thought  and  a  guide  to  exquisite  apprecia- 
tion— of  which  his  essay  on  Chaucer  is  an  honourable 
example — A  New  Study  of  English  Poetry  deserves 
all  the  praise  that  lies  in  our  power  to  give. 

[march,  1920. 


A,L.  N  183 


Coleridge  s  Criticism 

It  is  probably  true  that  Biographia  Liter  aria  is  the 
best  book  of  criticism  in  the  English  language; 
nevertheless,  it  is  rash  to  assume  that  it  is  a  book  of 
criticism  of  the  highest  excellence,  even  when  it  has 
passed  through  the  salutary  process  of  drastic  editing, 
such  as  that  to  which,  in  the  present  case,^  the  com- 
petent hands  of  Mr  George  Sampson  have  submitted 
it.  Its  garrulity,  its  digressions,  its  verbiage,  the 
marks  which  even  the  finest  portions  show  of  sub- 
mersion in  the  tepid  transcendentalism  that  wrought 
such  havoc  upon  Coleridge's  mind — these  are  its 
familiar  disfigurements.  They  are  not  easily  removed; 
for  they  enter  fairly  deeply  even  in  the  texture  of  those 
portions  of  the  book  in  which  Coleridge  devotes 
himself,  as  severely  as  he  can,  to  the  proper  business 
of  literary  criticism. 

It  may  be  that  the  prolixity  with  which  he  discusses 
and  refutes  the  poetical  principles  expounded  by 
Wordsworth  in  the  preface  of  Lyrical  Ballads  was 
due  to  the  tenderness  of  his  consideration  for  Words- 
worth's feelings,  an  influence  to  which  Sir  Arthur 
Quiller-Couch  directs  our  attention  in  his  introduction. 
That  is  honourable  to  Coleridge  as  a  man;  but  it 
cannot  exculpate  him  as  a  critic.  For  the  points  he 
had  to  make  for  and  against  Wordsworth  were  few 
and  simple.     First,  he  had  to  show  that  the  theory 

1  Coleridge  i  Biographia  Literaria,  Chapters  I.-IV.,  XIV.-XXII. 
— Wordsworth  i  Prefaces  and  Essays  on  Poetry,  1 800-1 815.  Edited  by 
George  Sampson,  with  an  Introductory  Essay  by  Sir  Arthur  Quiller- 
Couch.     (Cambridge  University  Press.) 

184 


Coleridge  s  Criticism 

of  a  poetic  diction  drawn  exclusively  from  the  language 
of  *  real  life  '  was  based  upon  an  equivocation,  and 
therefore  was  useless.  This  Coleridge  had  to  show 
to  clear  himself  of  the  common  condemnation  in 
which  he  had  been  involved,  as  one  wrongly  assumed 
to  endorse  Wordsworth^s  theory.  He  had  an  equally 
important  point  to  make  for  Wordsworth.  He  wished 
to  prove  to  him  that  the  finest  part  of  his  poetic  achieve- 
ment was  based  upon  a  complete  neglect  of  this 
theory,  and  that  the  weakest  portions  of  his  work 
were  those  in  which  he  most  closely  followed  it.  In 
this  demonstration  he  was  moved  by  the  desire  to  set 
his  friend  on  the  road  that  would  lead  to  the  most 
triumphant  exercise  of  his  own  powers. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Coleridge  made  both  his 
points;  but  he  made  them,  in  particular  the  former, 
at  exceeding  length,  and  at  the  cost  of  a  good  deal  of 
internal  contradiction.  He  sets  out,  in  the  former 
case,  to  maintain  that  the  language  of  poetry  is 
essentially  different  from  the  language  of  prose.  This 
he  professes  to  deduce  from  a  number  of  principles. 
His  axiom — and  it  is  possibly  a  sound  one — is  that 
metre  originated  in  a  spontaneous  effort  of  the  mind 
to  hold  in  check  the  workings  of  emotion.  From 
this,  he  argues,  it  follows  that  to  justify  the  existence 
of  metre,  the  language  of  a  poem  must  show  evidence 
of  emotion,  by  being  different  from  the  language  of 
prose.  Further,  he  says,  metre  in  itself  stimulates 
the  emotions,  and  for  this  condition  of  emotional 
excitement  *  correspondent  food  '  must  be  provided. 
Thirdly,  the  emotion  of  poetical  composition  itself 
demands  this  same  *  correspondent  food.*  The  final 
argument,  if  we  omit  one  drawn  from  an  obscure 

185 


Aspects  of  Literature 

theory  of  imitation  very  characteristic  of  Coleridge, 
is  the  incontrovertible  appeal  to  the  authority  of  the 
poets. 

Unfortunately,  the  elaborate  exposition  of  the 
first  three  arguments  is  not  only  unnecessary  but 
confusing,  for  Coleridge  goes  on  to  distinguish, 
interestingly  enough,  between  a  language  proper  to 
poetry,  a  language  proper  to  prose,  and  a  neutral 
language  which  may  be  used  indifferently  in  prose 
and  poetry,  and  later  still  he  quotes  a  beautiful  passage 
from  Chaucer's  Troilus  and  Cressida  as  an  example  of 
this  neutral  language,  forgetting  that,  if  his  principles 
are  correct,  Chaucer  was  guilty  of  a  sin  against  art 
in  writing  Troilus  and  Cressida  in  metre.  The  truth, 
of  course,  is  that  the  paraphernalia  of  principles  goes 
by  the  board.  In  order  to  refute  the  Wordsworthian 
theory  of  a  language  of  real  life  supremely  fitted  for 
poetry  you  have  only  to  point  to  the  great  poets,  and 
to  judge  the  fitness  of  the  language  of  poetry  you  can 
only  examine  the  particular  poem.  Wordsworth  was 
wrong  and  self-contradictory  without  doubt;  but 
Coleridge  was  equally  wrong  and  self-contradictory 
in  arguing  that  metre  necessitated  a  language  essentially 
different  from  that  of  prose. 

"  So  it  is  that  the  philosophic  part  of  the  specifically 
literary  criticism  of  the  Biographia  takes  us  nowhere 
in  particular.  The  valuable  part  is  contained  in  his 
critical  appreciation  of  Wordsworth's  poetry  and  that 
amazing  chapter — a  little  forlorn,  as  most  of  Coleridge's 
fine  chapters  are — on  *  the  specific  symptoms  of  poetic 
power  elucidated  in  a  critical  analysis  of  Shakespeare's 
Venus  and  Adonis.  In  these  few  pages  Coleridge  is 
at  the  summit  of  his  powers  as  a  critic.  So  long  as  his 
i86 


Coleridge  s  Criticism 

attention  could  be  fixed  on  a  particular  object,  so 
long  as  he  was  engaged  in  deducing  his  general 
principles  immediately  from  particular  instances  of 
the  highest  kind  of  poetic  excellence,  he  was  a  critic 
indeed.  Every  one  of  the  four  points  characteristic 
of  early  poetic  genius  which  he  formulates  deserves 
to  be  called  back  to  the  mind  again  and 
again : — 

'  The  delight  in  richness  and  sweetness  of  sound, 
even  to  a  faulty  excess,  if  it  be  evidently  original  and 
not  the  result  of  an  easily  imitable  mechanism,  I 
regard  as  a  highly  favourable  promise  in  the  com- 
positions of  a  young  man.  .  .  . 

*  A  second  promise  of  genius  is  the  choice  of 
subjects  very  remote  from  the  private  interests  and 
circumstances  of  the  writer  himself.  At  least  I 
have  found,  that  where  the  subject  is  taken  immediately 
from  the  author's  personal  sensations  and  experiences 
the  excellence  of  a  particular  poem  is  but  an  equivocal 
mark,  and  often  a  fallacious  pledge,  of  genuine  poetical 
power.  .  .  . 

*  Images,  however  beautiful,  though  faithfully 
copied  from  nature,  and  as  accurately  represented  in 
words,  do  not  of  themselves  characterise  the  poet. 
They  become  proofs  of  original  genius  only  as  far 
as  they  are  modified  by  a  predominant  passion;  or 
by  associated  thoughts  or  images  awakened  by  that 
passion;  or  when  they  have  the  effect  of  reducing 
multitude  to  unity,  or  succession  to  an  instant;  or 
lastly,  when  a  human  and  intellectual  life  is  transferred 
to  them  from  the  poet's  own  spirit.  .  .  . 

*  The    last    character  .  .  .  which    would    prove 

187 


Aspects  of  Literature 

indeed  but  little,  except  as  taken  conjointly  with  the 
former — yet  without  which  the  former  could  scarce 
exist  in  a  high  degree  ...  is  depths  and  energy  of 
thought.  No  man  was  ever  yet  a  great  poet  without 
being  at  the  same  time  a  profound  philosopher.  For 
poetry  is  the  blossom  and  the  fragrancy  of  all  human 
knowledge,  human  thoughts,  human  passions, 
emotions,  language.' 

In  the  context  the  most  striking  peculiarity  of 
this  enunciation  of  the  distinguishing  marks  of  poetic 
power,  apart  from  the  conviction  which  it  brings,  is 
that  they  are  not  in  the  least  concerned  with  the  actual 
language  of  poetry.  The  whole  subject  of  poetic 
diction  is  dropped  when  Coleridge*s  critical,  as  opposed 
to  his  logical,  faculty  is  at  work;  and,  although  this 
Chapter  XV  is  followed  by  many  pages  devoted  to 
the  analysis  and  refutation  of  the  Wordsworthian 
theory  and  to  the  establishment  of  those  principles  of 
poetic  diction  to  which  we  have  referred,  when 
Coleridge  comes  once  more  to  engage  his  pure  critical 
faculty,  in  the  appreciation  of  Wordsworth's  actual 
poetry  in  Chapter  XXII,  we  again  find  him  ignoring 
his  own  principles  precisely  on  those  occasions  when 
we  might  have  thought  them  applicable. 

Coleridge  enumerates  Wordsworth's  defects  one 
by  one.  The  first,  he  says,  is  an  inconstancy  of  style. 
For  a  moment  he  appears  to  invoke  his  principles  : 
*  Wordsworth  sinks  too  often  and  too  abruptly  to 
that  style  which  I  should  place  in  the  second  division 
of  language,  dividing  it  into  the  three  species;  firsts 
that  which  is  peculiar  to  poetry;  second^  that  which  is 
proper  only  in  prose;  and  thirds  the  neutral  or  common 
i88 


Coleridge  s  Criticism 

to  both.'  But  in  the  very  first  instance  which  Coleridge 
gives  we  can  see  that  the  principles  have  been  dragged 
in  by  the  hair,  and  that  they  are  really  alien  to  the 
argument  which  he  is  pursuing.  He  gives  this 
example  of  disharmony  from  the  poem  on  *  The 
Blind  Highland  Boy '  (whose  washing-tub  in  the 
1807  edition,  it  is  perhaps  worth  noting,  had  been 
changed  at  Coleridge's  own  suggestion,  with  a  rash 
contempt  of  probabilities,  into  a  turtle  shell  in  the 
edition  of  18 15): — 

'  And  one,  the  rarest,  was  a  shell 
Which  he,  poor  child,  had  studied  well: 
The  Shell  of  a  green  Turtle,  thin 
And  hollow; — you  might  sit  therein. 
It  was  so  wide,  and  deep. 

*  Our  Highland  Boy  oft  visited 
The  house  which  held  this  prize;  and  led 
By  choice  or  chance,  did  thither  come 
One  day,  when  no  one  was  at  home, 
And  found  the  door  unbarred.' 

The  discord  is,  in  any  case,  none  too  apparent; 
but  if  one  exists,  it  does  not  in  the  least  arise  from 
the  actual  language  which  Wordsworth  has  used.  If 
in  anything,  it  consists  in  a  slight  shifting  of  the  focus 
of  apprehension,  a  sudden  and  scarcely  perceptible 
emphasis  on  the  detail  of  actual  fact,  which  is  a 
deviation  from  the  emotional  key  of  the  poem  as  a 
whole.  In  the  next  instance  the  lapse  is,  however, 
indubitable : — 

189 


Aspects  of  Literature 

*  Thou  hast  a  nest,  for  thy  love  and  thy  rest, 
And  though  little  troubled  with  sloth, 
Drunken  Lark!   thou  would'st  be  loth 
To  be  such  a  traveller  as  L 

Happy,  happy  liver! 
With  a  soul  as  strong  as  a  mountain  River 
F curing  out  praise  to  tJi   Almighty  Giver ^ 
Joy  and  jollity  be  with  us  both, 
Hearing  thee  or  else  some  other 

As  merry  as  a  Brother 
I  on  the  earth  will  go  plodding  on, 
By  myself,  cheerfully,  till  the  day  is  done/ 

The  two  lines  in  italics  are  discordant.  But  again  it 
is  no  question  of  language  in  itself;  it  is  an  internal 
discrepancy  between  the  parts  of  a  whole  already 
debilitated  by  metrical  insecurity. 

Coleridge's  second  point  against  Wordsworth  is 
*  a  matter-of-jactness  in  certain  poems.'  Once  more 
there  is  no  question  of  language.  Coleridge  takes  the 
issue  on  to  the  highest  and  most  secure  ground. 
Wordsworth's  obsession  with  realistic  detail  is  a 
contravention  of  the  essential  catholicity  of  poetry; 
and  this  accidentality  is  manifested  in  laboriously  exact 
description  both  of  places  and  persons.  The  poet 
sterilises  the  creative  activity  of  poetry,  in  the  first 
case,  for  no  reason  at  all,  and  in  the  second,  because 
he  proposes  as  his  immediate  object  a  moral  end 
instead  of  the  giving  of  aesthetic  pleasure.  His 
prophets  and  wise  men  are  pedlars  and  tramps  not 
because  it  is  probable  that  they  should  be  of  this 
condition — it  is  on  the  contrary  highly  improbable 
— but  because  we  are  thus  to  be  taught  a  salutary 
190 


Coleridge  s  Criticism 

moral  lesson.    The  question  of  language  in  itself,  if  it 
enters  at  all  here,  enters  only  as  the  indifferent  means 
by  which  a  non-poetic  end  is  sought.    The  accidentality 
.lies  not  in  the  words,  but  in  the  poet's  intention. 

Coleridge's  third  and  fourth  points,  *  an  undue 
predilection  for  the  dramatic  form,*  and  *  an  eddying 
instead  of  a  progression  of  thought,'  may  be  passed 
as  quickly  as  he  passes  them  himself,  for  in  any  case 
they  could  only  be  the  cause  of  a  jejuneness  of  lan- 
guage. The  fifth,  more  interesting,  is  the  appearance 
of  *  thoughts  and  images  too  great  for  the  subject 
...  an  approximation  to  what  might  be  called 
mental  bombast.'  Coleridge  brings  forward  as  his 
first  instance  of  this  four  lines  which  have  taken  a 
deep  hold  on  the  affections  of  later  generations : — 

*  They  flash  upon  the  inward  eye 
Which  is  the  bliss  of  solitude! 
And  then  my  heart  with  pleasure  fills 
And  dances  with  the  daffodils.' 

Coleridge  found  an  almost  burlesque  bathos  in  the 
second  couplet  after  the  first.  It  would  be  difficult 
for  a  modern  critic  to  accept  that  verdict  altogether; 
nevertheless  his  objection  to  the  first  couplet  as  a 
description  of  physical  vision  is  surely  sound.  And 
it  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  objection  has  been 
evaded  by  posterity  in  a  manner  which  confirms 
Coleridge's  criticism.  The  *  inward  eye  '  is  almost 
universally  remembered  apart  from  its  context,  and 
interpreted  as  a  description  of  the  purely  spiritual 
process  to  which  alone,  in  Coleridge's  opinion,  it  was 
truly  apt. 

191 


Aspects  of  Literature 

The  enumeration  of  Wordsworth's  excellences 
which  follows  is  masterly;  and  the  exhilaration  with 
which  one  rises  through  the  crescendo  to  the  famous: 
*  Last  and  pre-eminently,  I  challenge  for  this  poet 
the  gift  of  Imagination  in  the  highest  and  strictest 
sense  of  the  word  .  .  .'  is  itself  a  pleasure  to  be 
derived  only  from  the  gift  of  criticism  of  the  highest 
and  strictest  kind. 

The  object  of  this  examination  has  been  to  show, 
not  that  the  Biographia  Literaria  is  undeserving  of 
the  high  praise  which  has  been  bestowed  upon  it, 
but  that  the  praise  has  been  to  some  extent  undis- 
criminating.  It  has  now  become  almost  a  tradition 
to  hold  up  to  our  admiration  Coleridge's  chapter  on 
poetic  diction,  and  Sir  Arthur  Ouiller-Couch,  in  a 
preface  that  is  as  unconventional  in  manner  as  it  is 
stimulating  in  most  of  its  substance,  maintains  the 
tradition.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  what  Coleridge  has  to 
say  on  poetic  diction  is  prolix  and  perilously  near 
commonplace.  Instead  of  making  to  Wordsworth  the 
wholly  sufficient  answer  that  much  poetry  of  the  highest 
kind  employs  a  language  that  by  no  perversion  can 
be  called  essentially  the  same  as  the  language  of 
prose,  he  allows  himself  to  be  led  by  his  German 
metaphysic  into  considering  poetry  as  a  Ding  an  sick 
and  deducing  therefrom  the  proposition  that  poetry 
must  employ  a  language  different  from  that  of  prose. 
That  proposition  is  false,  as  Coleridge  himself  quite 
adequately  shows  from  his  remarks  upon  what,  he 
called  the  *  neutral  '  language  of  Chaucer  and  Herbert. 
But  instead  of  following  up  the  clue  and  beginning 
to  inquire  whether  or  not  narrative  poetry  by  nature 
demands  a  language  approximating  to  that  of  prose, 
192 


Coleridge  s  Criticism 

and  whether  Wordsworth,  in  so  far  as  he  aimed  at 
being  a  narrative  poet,  was  not  working  on  a  correct 
but  exaggerated  principle,  he  leaves  the  bald  contra- 
diction and  swerves  off  to  the  analysis  of  the  defects 
and  excellences  of  Wordsworth's  actual  achievement. 
Precisely  because  we  consider  it  of  the  greatest 
importance  that  the  best  of  Coleridge's  criticism  should 
be  studied  and  studied  again,  we  think  it  unfortunate 
that  Sir  Arthur  Quiller-Couch  should  recommend 
the  apprentice  to  get  the  chapters  on  poetic  diction 
by  heart.  He  will  be  condemned  to  carry  about  with 
him  a  good  deal  of  dubious  logic  and  a  false  conclusion. 
What  is  worth  while  learning  from  Coleridge  is 
something  different;  it  is  not  his  behaviour  with  *  a 
principle,*  but  his  conduct  when  confronted  with 
poetry  in  the  concrete,  his  magisterial  ordonnance 
(to  use  his  own  word)  and  explication  of  his  own 
aesthetic  intuitions,  and  his  manner  of  employing  in 
this,  the  essential  task  of  poetic  criticism,  the  results 
of  his  own  deep  study  of  all  the  great  poetry  that  he 
knew.  [april,  1920. 


193 


Shakespeare  Criticism 

It  is  an  exciting,  though  exhausting,  experience  to 
read  a  volume  of  the  great  modern  Variorum  Shake- 
speare from  cover  to  cover.  One  derives  from  the 
exercise  a  sense  of  the  evolution  of  Shakespeare 
criticism  which  cannot  be  otherwise  obtained;  one 
begins  to  understand  that  Pope  had  his  merits  as 
an  editor,  as  indeed  a  man  of  genius  could  hardly 
fail  to  have,  to  appreciate  the  prosy  and  pedestrian 
pains  of  Theobald,  to  admire  the  amazing  erudition 
of  Steevens.  One  sees  the  phases  of  the  curious 
process  by  which  Shakespeare  was  elevated  at  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  to  a  sphere 
wherein  no  mortal  man  of  genius  could 
breathe.  For  a  dizzy  moment  every  line  that 
he  wrote  bore  the  authentic  impress  of  the 
divine.  Efflavit  dens.  In  a  century,  from  being 
largely  beneath  criticism  Shakespeare  had  passed 
to  a  condition  where  he  was  almost  completely 
beyond  it. 

King  John  affords  an  amusing  instance  of  this 
reverential  attitude.  The  play,  as  is  generally  known, 
was  based  upon  a  slightly  earlier  and  utterly  un- 
Shakespearean  production  entitled  The  Troublesome 
Raigne  of  King  John.  The  only  character  Shakespeare 
added  to  those  he  found  ready  to  his  hand  was  that 
of  James  Gurney,  who  enters  with  Lady  Falcon- 
bridge  after  the  scene  between  the  Bastard  and 
his  brother,  says  four  words,  and  departs  for 
ever. 
194 


Shakespeare  Criticism 

*  Bast, — ^James  Gurney,  wilt  thou  give  us  leave 

awhile  ? 
Gur. — Good  leave,  good  Philip. 
Bast. — Philip  !     Sparrow!    James.* 

It  is  obvious  that  Shakespeare's  sole  motive  in 
introducing  Gurney  is  to  provide  an  occasion  for 
the  Bastard's  characteristic,  though  not  to  a  modern 
mind  quite  obvious,  jest,  based  on  the  fact  that 
Philip  was  at  the  time  a  common  name  for  a  sparrow. 
The  Bastard,  just  dubbed  Sir  Richard  Plantagenet  by 
the  King,  makes  a  thoroughly  natural  jibe  at  his 
former  name,  Philip,  to  which  he  had  just  shown  such 
breezy  indifference.  The  jest  could  not  have  been 
made  to  Lady  Falconbridge  without  a  direct  insult 
to  her,  which  would  have  been  alien  to  the  natural, 
blunt,  and  easygoing  fondness  of  the  relation  which 
Shakespeare  establishes  between  the  Bastard  and  his 
mother.  So  Gurney  is  quite  casually  brought  in  to 
receive  it.  But  this  is  not  enough  for  the  Shakespeare- 
drunken  Coleridge. 

*  For  an  instance  of  Shakespeare's  power  in 
minimis^  I  generally  quote  James  Gurney's  character 
in  King  John,  How  individual  and  comical  he  is 
with  the  four  words  allowed  to  his  dramatic  life  I  ' 

Assuredly  it  is  not  with  any  intention  of  diminishing 
Coleridge's  title  as  a  Shakespearean  critic  that  we 
bring  forward  this  instance.  He  is  the  greatest 
critic  of  Shakespeare;  and  the  quality  of  his  excellence 
is  displayed  in  one  of  the  other  few  notes  he  left  on 
this  particular  play.    In  Act  III,  scene  ii.,  Warburton's 

195 


Aspects  of  Literature 

emendation  of  *  airy  *  to  '  fiery  '  had  in  Coleridge's 
day  been  received  into  the  text  of  the  Bastard's 
lines: — 

*  Now  by  my  life,  this  day  grows  wondrous  hot; 
Some  airy  devil  hovers  in  the  sky.' 

On  which  Coleridge  writes: — 

*  I  prefer  the  old  text:  the  word  *  devil '  implies 
*  fier}^'  You  need  only  to  read  the  line,  laying  a  full 
and  strong  emphasis  on  *  devil,'  to  perceive  the 
uselessness  and  tastelessness  of  Warburton's  altera- 
tion.' 

The  test  is  absolutely  convincing — a  poet's  criticism 
of  poetry.  But  that  Coleridge  went  astray  not  once 
but  many  times,  under  the  influence  of  his  idolatry 
of  Shakespeare,  corroborates  the  general  conclusion 
that  is  forced  upon  any  one  who  will  take  the  trouble 
to  read  a  whole  volume  of  the  modern  Variorum, 
There  has  been  much  editing,  much  comment,  but 
singularly  little  criticism  of  Shakespeare;  a  half- 
pennyworth of  bread  to  an  intolerable  deal  of  sack. 
The  pendulum  has  swung  violently  from  niggling 
and  insensitive  textual  quibble  to  that  equally  dis- 
tressing exercise  of  human  ingenuity,  idealistic  en- 
comium, of  which  there  is  a  typical  example  in  the 
opening  sentence  of  Mr  Masefield's  remarks  upon 
the  play:  *  Like  the  best  Shakespearean  tragedies. 
King  John  is  an  intellectual  form  in  which  a  number 
of  people  with  obsessions  illustrate  the  idea  of 
treachery.'  We  remember  that  Mr  Masefield  has 
196 


Shakespeare  Criticism 

much  better  than  this  to  say  of  Shakespeare  in  his 
little  book;  but  we  fasten  upon  this  sentence  because 
it  is  set  before  us  in  the  Variorum^  and  because  it  too 
*  is  an  intellectual  form  in  which  a  literary  man  with 
obsessions  illustrates  his  idea  of  criticism.*  Genetically, 
it  is  a  continuation  of  the  shoddy  element  in  Coleridge^s 
Shakespeare  criticism,  a  continual  bias  towards  trans- 
cendental interpretation  of  the  obvious.  To  take  the 
origin  a  phase  further  back,  it  is  the  portentous 
offspring  of  the  feeble  constituent  of  German  philos- 
ophy (a  refusal  to  see  the  object)  after  it  had  been 
submitted  to  an  idle  process  of  ferment  in  the  softer 
part  of  Coleridge's  brain. 

King  John  is  not  in  the  least  what  Mr  Masefield, 
under  this  dangerous  influence,  has  persuaded  himself 
it  is.  It  is  simply  the  effort  of  a  young  man  of  great 
genius  to  rewrite  a  bad  play  into  a  good  one.  The 
effort  was,  on  the  whole,  amazingly  successful;  that 
the  play  is  only  a  good  one,  instead  of  a  very  good 
one,  is  not  surprising.  The  miracle  is  that  anything 
should  have  been  made  of  The  Troublesome  Raigne  at 
all.  The  Variorum  extracts  show  that,  of  the  many 
commentators  who  studied  the  old  play  with  Shake- 
speare's version,  only  Swinburne  saw,  or  had  the 
courage  to  say,  how  utterly  null  the  old  play  really  is. 
To  have  made  Shakespeare's  Falconbridge  out  of  the 
old  lay  figure,  to  have  created  the  scenes  between 
Hubert  and  John,  and  Hubert  and  Arthur,  out  of  that 
decrepit  skeleton — that  is  the  work  of  a  commanding 
poetical  genius  on  the  threshold  of  full  mastery  of  its 
powers,  worthy  of  all  wonder,  no  doubt,  but  doubly 
worthy  of  close  examination. 

But  *  ideas  of  treachery  '  I    Into  what  cloud  cuckoo 

197 


Aspects  of  Liter aticre 

land  have  we  been  beguiled  by  Coleridge's  laudanum 
trances  ?  A  limbo — of  this  we  are  confident — where 
Shakespeare  never  set  foot  at  any  moment  in  his  life, 
and  where  no  robust  critical  intelligence  can  endure 
for  a  moment.  We  must  save  ourselves  from  this 
insidious  disintegration  by  keeping  our  eye  upon  the 
object,  and  the  object  is  just  a  good  (not  a  very  good) 
play.  Not  an  Ibsen,  a  Hauptmann,  a  Shaw,  or  a 
Masefield  play,  where  the  influence  and  ravages  of 
these  *  ideas  '  are  certainly  perceptible,  but  merely  a 
Shakespeare  play,  one  of  those  works  of  true  poetic 
genius  which  can  only  be  produced  by  a  mind  strong 
enough  to  resist  every  attempt  at  invasion  by  the 
'  idea  '-bacillus. 

In  considering  a  Shakespeare  play  the  word 
*  idea  '  had  best  be  kept  out  of  the  argument  altogether; 
but  there  are  two  senses  in  which  it  might  be  intelli- 
gibly used.  You  might  call  the  dramatic  skeleton 
Shakespeare's  idea  of  the  play.  It  is  the  half- 
mechanical,  half-organic  factor  in  the  work  of  poetic 
creation — the  necessary  means  by  which  a  poet  can 
conveniently  explicate  and  express  his  manifold 
aesthetic  intuitions.  This  dramatic  skeleton  is  governed 
by  laws  of  its  own,  which  were  first  and  most 
brilliantly  formulated  by  Aristotle  in  terms  that,  in 
essentials,  hold  good  for  all  time.  You  may  investigate 
this  skeleton,  seize,  if  you  can,  upon  the  peculiarity 
by  which  it  is  differentiated  from  all  other  skeletons; 
you  may  say,  for  instance,  that  Othello  is  a  tragedy  of 
jealousy,  or  Hamlet  of  the  inhibition  of  self-conscious- 
ness. But  if  your  *  idea'  is  to  have  any  substance  it 
must  be  moulded  very  closely  upon  the  particular 
object  with  which  you  are  dealing;  and  in  the  end 
198 


Shakespeare  Criticism 

you  will  find  yourself  reduced  to  the  analysis  of 
individual  characters. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  word  *  idea  '  might  be 
intelligibly  used  of  Shakespeare's  whole  attitude  to 
the  material  of  his  contemplation,  the  centre  of 
comprehension  from  which  he  worked,  the  aspect 
under  which  he  viewed  the  universe  of  his  interest. 
There  is  no  reason  to  rest  content  with  Coleridge's 
application  of  the  epithet  *  myriad-minded,*  which  is, 
at  the  best,  an  evasion  of  a  vital  question.  The 
problem  is  to  see  Shakespeare's  mind  suh  specie 
unitatis.  It  can  be  done;  there  never  has  been  and 
never  will  be  a  human  mind  which  can  resist  such 
an  inquiry  if  it  is  pursued  with  sufficient  perseverance 
and  understanding.  What  chiefly  stands  in  the  way 
is  that  tradition  of  Shakespeariolatry  which  Coleridge 
so  powerfully  inaugurated,  not  least  by  the  epithet 
*  myriad-minded.' 

But  of  *  ideas  '  in  any  other  senses  than  these — 
and  in  neither  of  these  cases  is  *  idea  '  the  best  word 
for  the  object  of  search — let  us  beware  as  we  would 
of  the  plague,  in  criticism  of  Shakespeare  or  any  other 
great  poet.  Poets  do  not  have  *  ideas  ' ;  they  have 
perceptions.  They  do  not  have  an  *  idea  ' ;  they  have 
comprehension.  Their  creation  is  aesthetic,  and  the 
working  of  their  mind  proceeds  from  the  realisation 
of  one  aesthetic  perception  to  that  of  another,  more 
comprehensive  if  they  are  to  be  great  poets  having 
within  them  the  principle  of  poetic  growth.  There  is 
undoubtedly  an  organic  process  in  the  evolution  of  a 
great  poet,  which  you  may,  for  convenience  of  expres- 
sion, call  logical;  but  the  moment  you  forget  that 
the    use    of    the    word   *  logic,'   in    this    context,   is 

A.L.  o  199 


Aspects  of  Liiterature 

metaphorical,  you  are  in  peril.    You  can  follow  out  this 

*  logical  process  '  in  a  poet  only  by  a  kindred  creative 
process  of  aesthetic  perception  passing  into  aesthetic 
comprehension.  The  hunt  for  *  ideas  '  will  only  make 
that  process  impossible;  it  prevents  the  object  from 
ever  making  its  own  impression  upon  the  mind.  It 
has  to  speak  with  the  language  of  logic,  whereas  its 
use  and  function  in  the  world  is  to  speak  with  a 
language  not  of  logic,  but  of  a  process  of  mind  which 
is  at  least  as  sovereign  in  its  own  right  as  the  discursive 
reason. 

Let  us  away  then  with  *  logic  '  and  away  with 

*  ideas  '  from  the  art  of  literary  criticism;  but  not,  in 
a  foolish  and  impercipient  reaction,  to  revive  the 
impressionistic  criticism  which  has  sapped  the  English 
brain  for  a  generation  past.  The  art  of  criticism  is 
rigorous;  impressions  are  merely  its  raw  material; 
the  life-blood  of  its  activity  is  in  the  process  of 
ordonnance  of  aesthetic  impressions. 

It  is  time,  however,  to  return  for  a  moment  to 
Shakespeare,  and  to  observe  in  one  crucial  instance 
the  effect  of  the  quest  for  logic  in  a  single  line.  In 
the  fine  scene  where  John  hints  to  Hubert  at  Arthur's 
murder,  he  speaks  these  lines  (in  the  First  Folio 
text): — 

*  I  had  a  thing  to  say,  but  let  it  goe : 
The  Sunne  is  in  the  heauen,  and  the  proud  day, 
Attended  with  the  pleasure  of  the  world. 
Is  all  too  wanton,  and  too  full  of  gawdes 
To  giue  me  audience:    If  the  midnight  bell 
Did  with  his  yron  tongue,  and  brazen  mouth 
Sound  on  into  the  drowzie  race  of  night, 
200 


Shakespeare  Criticism 

If  this  same  were  a  Churchyard  where  we  stand, 
And  thou  possessed  with  a  thousand  wrongs : 
.  .  .  Then,  in  despight  of  brooded  watchfull 

day, 
I  would  into  thy  bosome  poure  my  thoughts.  .  .  .' 

If  one  had  to  choose  the  finest  line  in  this  passage, 
the  choice  would  fall  upon 

*  Sound  on  into  the  drowsy  race  of  night.* 

Yet  you  will  have  to  look  hard  for  it  in  the  modern 
editions  of  Shakespeare.  At  the  best  you  will  find  it 
with  the  mark  of  corruption : — 

t  *  Sound  on  into  the  drowsy  race  of  night  (*  Globe  *) ; 

and  you  run  quite  a  risk  of  finding 

*  Sound  one  into  the  drowsy  race  of  night ' 

(*  Oxford  '). 

There  are  six  pages  of  close-printed  comment  upon 
the  line  in  the  Variorum,  The  only  reason,  we  can 
see,  why  it  should  be  the  most  commented  line  in 
King  John  is  that  it  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful.  No 
one  could  stand  it.  Of  all  the  commentators,  only 
one,  Miss  Porter,  whom  we  name  honoris  causd^  stands 
by  the  line  with  any  conviction  of  its  beauty.  Every 
other  person  either  alters  it  or  regrets  his  inability 
to  alter  it. 

*  How  can  a  bell  sound  on  into  a  race  ?  *  pipe 
the   little   editors.      What   is   *  the  race   of  night  ? ' 

201 


Aspects  of  Literature 

What  can  it  mean  ?  How  could  a  race  be  drowsy  ? 
What  an  azvful  contradiction  in  terms!  And  so, 
while  you  and  I,  and  all  the  other  ordinary  lovers  of 
Shakespeare  are  peacefully  sleeping  in  our  beds,  they 
come  along  with  their  little  chisels,  and  chop  out  the 
horribly  illogical  word  and  pop  in  a  horribly  logical 
one,  and  we  (unless  we  can  afford  the  Variorum^ 
which  we  can't)  know  nothing  whatever  about  it. 
We  have  no  redress.  If  we  get  out  of  our  beds  and 
creep  upon  them  while  they  are  asleep — they  never  are 
— and  take  out  our  little  chisels  and  chop  off  their 
horribly  stupid  little  heads,  we  shall  be  put  in  prison 
and  Mr  Justice  Darling  will  make  a  horribly  stupid 
little  joke  about  us.  There  is  only  one  thing  to  do. 
We  must  make  up  our  minds  that  we  have  to  combine 
in  our  single  person  the  scholar  and  the  amateur; 
we  cannot  trust  these  gentlemen. 

And,  indeed,  they  have  been  up  to  their  little 
games  elsewhere  in  King  John,  They  do  not  like 
the  reply  of  the  citizens  of  Angiers  to  the  summons 
of  the  rival  kings: — 

*  A  greater  powre  than  We  denies  all  this, 
And  till  it  be  undoubted,  we  do  locke 
Our  former  scruple  in  our  strong-barr'd  gates; 
Kings  of  our  feare,  untill  our  feares  resolu'd 
Be  by  some  certaine  king,  purg'd  and  deposed.* 

Admirable  sense,  excellent  poetry.  But  no!  We 
must  not  have  it.  Instead  we  are  given  *  King'd 
of  our  fears  *  (*  Globe  ')  or  *  Kings  of  ourselves  * 
(*  Oxford  ').     Bad  sense,  bad  poetry. 

They  do  not  like  Pandulph's  speech  to  France: — 
202 


Shakespeare  Criticism 

*  France,  thou  maist  hold  a  serpent  by  the  tongue, 
A  cased  Hon  by  the  mortall  paw, 

A  fasting  tiger  safer  by  the  tooth 
Than  keep  in  peace  that  hand  which  thou  dost 
hold/ 

*  Cased,'  caged,  is  too  much  for  them.  We  must 
have  '  chafed,'  in  spite  of 

*  If  thou  would'st  not  entomb  thyself  alive 
And  case  thy  reputation  in  thy  tent.' 

Again,  the  Folio  text  of  the  meeting  between  the 
Bastard  and  Hubert  in  Act  V.,  when  Hubert  fails  to 
recognise  the  Bastard's  voice,  runs  thus: — 

*  Unkinde  remembrance:  thou  and  endles  night. 
Have  done  me  shame:    Brave  Soldier,  pardon 

me 
That  any  accent  breaking  from  thy  tongue 
Should  scape  the  true  acquaintaince  of  mine 

eare.' 

This  time  *  endless  '  is  not  poetical  enough  for  the 
editors.  Theobald's  emendation  *  eyeless  '  is  received 
into  the  text.  One  has  only  to  read  the  brief  scene 
through  to  realise  that  Hubert  is  wearied  and  obsessed 
by  the  night  that  will  never  end.  He  is  overwrought 
by  his  knowledge  of 

*  news  fitting  to  the  night. 
Black,  fearful,  comfortless,  and  horrible,' 

203 


Aspects  of  Literature 

and  by  his  long  wandering  in  search  of  the  Bastard: — 

*  Why,  here  I  walk  in  the  black  brow  of  night 
To  find  you  out.* 

Yet  the  dramatically  perfect  *  endless '  has  had 
to  make  way  for  the  dramatically  stupid  *  eyeless.* 
Is  it  surprising  that  we  do  not  trust  these  gentlemen  ? 

[april,  1920 


GLASGOW  :     W.    COLLINS   SONS    AND    CO.,    LTD. 


SE 


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